Pinocchio is Bleeding
by Roseveare
Summary: Duke and Nathan wake up to discover their bodies battered and their memories missing three days - and events no-one will disclose that left a death toll in double figures. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: Pinocchio is Bleeding  
AUTHOR: roseveare  
RATING: NC17  
LENGTH: 28,500 words  
SUMMARY: Duke and Nathan wake up to discover their bodies battered and their memories missing three days - and events no-one will disclose that left a death toll in double-figures.  
NOTES #1: Season 1 after 'The Hand You're Dealt'.  
THANKS: To Miah_Arthur for beta-reading.  
WARNINGS: Body horror.  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no profit, yadda, yadda, yadda.

* * *

**Pinocchio is Bleeding**

Duke woke up feeling like his head was full of fluff. It even felt like there were fibres on his tongue. His mouth was dry and his throat cracked when he tried to swallow, rasping and rattling like there was sand in there, too. He tried to spit, tried again to swallow, mostly just hacked nastily, and wondered what the _hell_ he'd been doing last night?

He managed to crank his eyes open. Light flooded in, making him moan and clutch his head and wish he hadn't bothered. But at the same moment, he was strangely comforted to hear a low groan close by that at least told him he wasn't alone. Though perhaps it was cause to worry if he could recognise Nathan Wuornos from so little, in this state.

Talk about having it bad.

"Duke?" Nathan's voice grunted.

"Working up to it," Duke croaked.

Nathan made a satisfied affirmative noise and left it at that. Did that mean he was equally reassured by the presence of Duke's company? Because if so, things were worse than Duke had imagined. Potentially apocalyptic.

Something was lying against his legs. He kicked at it a bit, and when he registered that it was warm, had the approximate consistency of flesh, and didn't react, figured he'd found Nathan. He managed to point his slit eyes in that direction and filter out some of the brightness, and confirmed that, yes, it was Nathan, and they were both lying side by side along opposite ends of a large, deep couch. His feet were about level with Nathan's stomach and vice-versa, and his shoulders were propped against the couch's padded arm. Purple leather. A few thoughts about taste crimes floated through Duke's brain, but floated straight out again. He lacked the energy.

He watched Nathan lever up, squinting and holding a hand to his temple as though keeping his eyeballs in was presenting him difficulty. Nathan couldn't be in _pain_, but if he was experiencing the same level of wacky in his body's signals that Duke was getting, it was reasonable to assume he wouldn't be processing this normally either. However he processed.

Nathan lay against the inside of the couch, so for him sitting up involved half climbing over Duke, who kicked at him again and squirmed and groaned. Nathan hissed in displeasure and smacked Duke's feet away. Hunched upright on the edge of the couch over his bent knees, he grated, "What the hell happened?" His face was blank and unusually open.

"I don't know." Duke was disappointed in himself that he couldn't offer more, when Nathan was looking to him and looking like he needed help. The last ten years since returning to town had taught Duke to keep a lid on thoughts like that, but his brain wasn't under his usual degree of control.

"Isn't this Montague Kale's house?" Nathan said. He tottered to his feet. His tall, thin frame gave its best impression of being buffeted by strong winds, leaning and swaying like he'd forgotten the use of all his limbs.

Duke didn't intend to do much moving - let Nathan do that, _he_ didn't hurt - but he could feel a stiffness and lack of co-operation in his own body that didn't resemble the stiffness of injury or over-exercise. He shuffled on the couch, scrubbing at his eyes and making the minimum movement he could get away with. "Jesus. I hate you for not feeling this."

Nathan looked back at him and sort of twitched, but Duke wasn't bright enough to interpret anything from that right now. "Must've been hit by a Trouble." Nathan continued to waver on the tiled floor and stare around stupidly. He pressed the heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose, collected himself, then scanned his eyes over Duke, and down at his own body. "You look all right. I _seem_ all right. This is," he paused and struggled, "that big conservatory up at the Kale place. I've been here for a couple of parties. I sort of remember being here... earlier." He stopped.

Duke realised he knew where that hesitation was coming from. He wasn't wholly sure what day it was. There was a hazy sense of his body clock having been screwed with, and now just being confused.

He got up as far as an elbow and managed to take a more comprehensive look around. The big couch was one of four. There was a grand piano in the corner. All the light that was giving him such a hard time was flooding in from over 180 degrees of giant windows and a glass roof. There were leafy, vaguely-tropical plants dotted around. Duke had never been in the sort of social circles that went to the parties at Kale's semi-mansion, but since he'd acquired the restaurant he'd catered for a few, so he'd been here a few times making deliveries.

He didn't remember coming here, last thing, but couldn't remember where else he'd been if not here. He bounced that one back to Nathan.

"There was a case," Nathan said positively, almost vibrating with a nervous energy that was starting to edge towards annoyance.

"There's _always_ a case, Nate," Duke protested. He inched his way up the couch, pulling his legs up and folding himself over his knees, clinging to the cushions, and released a long, painful moan because nothing wanted to move at all. "If this is a hangover, I'm never drinking again."

"This isn't alcohol," Nathan snapped.

"Then get me something to drink," Duke entreated.

Nathan rolled his head back and stared up, shielding his face with an arm. "Light looks like early morning. There must be someone around here somewhere, and I figure we're due some answers."

"You're going walkabout," Duke said flatly. Nathan was going to make him _get up_? Not that he didn't already know the man was a bastard, but that was cruel and unusual.

"I'll come back." Nathan took a few lurching steps, and Duke half rose, holding the back and arm of the couch, sliding one foot over the edge, gripped by a panic he didn't want to admit. _Ow_. Fuck Nathan and his screwed-up nerves, anyway... Duke's foot slid around, curling up like he'd never walked before, not wanting to push flat against the floor. As his line of sight jolted, he spied something that caused him to hiss in urgent discovery: "_Nate_!"

"_What_?" The impatience in Nathan's voice as he struggled to turn spoke of the difficulty he, too, was having with movement.

Duke jabbed a finger at the big couch behind and to the left of them. A blue cardigan was abandoned on one end of it. "That's Audrey's."

"It's not," Nathan responded with swift conviction. Confusion crossed his face. "All right... I've never seen her wear it, but I know it's Audrey's, too."

"We've lost some memories," Duke said. He looked Nathan over and concluded that they couldn't have missed anything ridiculous like months or years. Nathan looked much the same as he could last remember, so it was weeks at most, but hopefully only days. A day or two. "Hey, and Audrey was here," he yelped, as Nathan made to turn away again, "and she'll be coming back. So don't go anywhere. Because..." He fell abruptly silent, aware of being on the verge of saying things he'd be embarrassed about when he was less freaked out. Then he figured it was too late already. "I don't think I can walk yet."

"You want me to stay and hold your hand?" Nathan asked gruffly, and Duke offered a hand on the off-chance, but instead Nathan snorted and limped to the blue cardigan. A few contortions juggling around his centre of balance had to be employed for him to lean down and pick it up, but he raised the garment to his face and inhaled, then released his breath with a sigh.

Duke said tightly, "Do you really have to do things like that?" _Freak of nature_. He hated the idea that Nathan knew Audrey _by smell_.

"Yeah, well-" Nathan was unimpressed. "She was here. And there's a coffee cup ring on this side table that's still wet. I should go find her."

"Nate, it's a big house and you can _barely_ walk," Duke protested. "Wait here and-"

_Wait_. There was Audrey, standing in the door as Nathan turned back to it, her jaw dropping and her eyes widening. The cup in her hand slid through her fingers to dash coffee across the tiles when it landed, but she had no attention to spare for it.

"Nathan! Oh my God. _Nathan_!" She ran across the intervening space and hurled herself at him. Duke didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been that. Nathan was barely on his feet as things were, and her impact sent him staggering. He backed against the piano with a din of keys all striking at once.

Duke was... well, astounded and fighting a horrible feeling of jealousy, because Audrey had her hands on Nathan's face and looked like she was about to cry tears of joy, and he hadn't thought they'd had a chance to develop that level of attachment in the few months Audrey had been in Haven. But who was he to take umbrage when he and Nathan were barely talking to each other again, and that much only due to her influence?

Audrey finally made sure the blinking, poleaxed Nathan was propped up against the piano stool and came over to Duke. That show of priorities offended him as well. Then again, Nathan had also been _nearer_. Yeah, that was it, he told himself.

"Are you all right?" she asked, leaning down to fold him, too, in a hug, then pulling away businesslike a moment later, studying him critically. "I know there are things Nathan can't tell me. Does anything hurt?" The was a worrying hesitation in that question.

"Should we expect it to?" asked Nathan, while Duke was still trying to find his tongue. "Parker, what _happened_?"

"I don't know what to expect," Audrey said. "You guys... you both got hit by something... a Trouble. I thought I was going to lose you. I've been sitting up all night... and most of yesterday... hoping you'd come out of it."

Her eyes looked red-rimmed, and not only from tiredness. "Tears, Officer Parker?" Duke touched a ghost of moisture at the edge of her eye with his fingertip. "For the likes of we two idiots? It must have been bad."

"Pretty bad, yeah." Audrey nodded and swallowed. "Scary bad."

"Well, I'm fine," Nathan grumped, "except I can't remember what happened and everything's - stiff." He shrugged a bit and Audrey gave him a questioning look. "Like my body doesn't know how to move properly. Duke's worse," he added, grudgingly, but by God that was _almost_ concern, so Duke would take it.

There was something Audrey wasn't telling them, clear as the self-imposed distance entering her eyes. Her answer to Nathan's question had been deliberately unspecific. A parade of horrible possibilities marching through Duke's brain. Audrey was far too grim, too closed-off, too shattered.

"I... suppose that's not so surprising," Audrey said, smiling uncertainly. "I'm sure it'll... wear off."

"Where's Monty?" Nathan asked. "Were we here when it happened? We've been here since _yesterday_?"

"More than that," Audrey said reluctantly. "And Monty is... a story for another time. Right now I should get you both back home so you can rest. I'd take you to a doctor to get checked out, but you know how it is..."

"Troubles," Nathan filled in. "There's always Julia. She's still in town at the moment." Although Nathan didn't look like he really wanted to be checked out, and he didn't push it.

"Now you're awake, I'm pretty sure you'll both be fine." Audrey's grin was still so dented, and her relief so overpowering even with the control she was obviously trying to exert. Duke _knew_ she was hiding something, but his brain wasn't working at anything like full capacity, and if even Nathan didn't have the stubbornness to push this right now... "Nathan, do you think you can help me get Duke to the car?"

Nathan looked dubious about the prospect, but made his way slowly back to the couch, detouring to retrieve Audrey's blue cardigan. He slid his hands over it as curiously as if he could feel again as he handed it to her. "When did you get this?"

"Oh." She paused blankly, thinking. "Wednesday, I think. Julia was clearing out some of her old things she'd left at home. She gave me a bag of clothes."

"What day is it now?" Nathan asked.

She visibly had to think about that, too, and double-checked herself by pulling her phone from her pocket. "It's 6.53, Sunday morning."

Duke wouldn't necessarily remember or know about Julia giving Audrey clothes in some female friendship sharing ritual, and Audrey wouldn't necessarily have worn that cardigan on the first day she'd had it, but he figured that left him a timeframe of one to four days to fill in. Nathan opened his mouth and then shut it again, and they shared a covert glance as he carefully leaned down to slip an arm under Duke's shoulder.

Audrey wasn't telling them things. The question that raised was whether there was still a Trouble afoot and she was caught in the middle of it, or if there was something else going on here that, for whatever reason, she didn't want them to understand.

As Nathan and Audrey hauled Duke upright, they lost balance and lurched against the couch, knocking it backwards a few inches and making a nasty screech on the tiled floor. Audrey pretty much planted her feet and rescued all three of them. Nathan said, "Wait," and staggered loose.

Duke swore at him while Audrey struggled, but Nathan ignored their plight and knelt jerkily to the tiles uncovered by the shifting of the couch. He ran his fingertips across the floor and lifted them up, coated in... was that dust? Sand? "I wonder what this is?"

"Nothing," Audrey said, her face paling almost to the colour of paper. "Nothing at all."

* * *

By the time Audrey dropped him off at the _Cape Rouge_, Duke had gained a little more steadiness, whereas Nathan was a snoring flop of limbs on the seat next to him. Audrey hauled Duke out of the back of her rental car on her own and saw him onto the boat and into bed.

"You seem," he remembered pointing out sluggishly, "really sure that we're going to be all right." No doctors. Willing to ditch them home and leave. This, after all her worry earlier.

"I'm pretty sure," she responded, and he remembered even in that state not trusting her words in the least. "It was whether you'd wake up I was worried about. You're both fixed now."

Whether they'd wake up... Duke's head felt too heavy and he let it loll back, and after that must have gone to sleep. Even though he had Audrey Parker in his bedroom and every excuse for some intimate sympathy.

When he woke again it was dark and he was alone. He could feel the faint rocking of the sea like an old friend. He rolled over to grope for his alarm clock and bring it close-in to his face. 3AM. He sat up slowly, easing co-operation from his body. The deep aches in his limbs had eased but not abated. Moving was still harder than it should be. His arms felt heavy, his joints stiff. His left shoulder fought him particularly, almost immobile. Even the joints in his fingers, like he had to force each small movement, the digits clicking and mechanical.

Duke sat up and switched on the lamp beside his bed, and for a while stared at his fingers as he worked them to loosen the stiffness. Things improved, slowly, although he was unsure if that was just himself adjusting, getting used to working around the wearing heaviness that lined his bones.

His hand _looked_ fine. No bruising. No blood. No marks at all.

His shook his head, scrubbed the hand roughly over his face, and reached for his phone on the nightstand.

The idea of disturbing Nathan at such an unsociable hour didn't bother him much. In fact, it was almost a disappointment when Nate picked up instantly with a gruff, "Yeah?"

"Nate! How are you?" He'd meant to work up to it a bit more casually then that, but the question came out tense and focused.

"Alphabetising my true crime collection."

"Can't sleep, huh?" Duke said.

"I slept till lunchtime. Then I tried to go to work and catch up with what's been happening. Audrey sent me home. Look, I..." He fell silent, then warily continued, "Something's going on with Parker. I still don't know what hit us, but I think something's got at her. Maybe it didn't effect her the same way, took longer..."

"And you're telling _me_?" Duke asked, staring at the wall. "Because that makes me think something's amiss with you, Nathan."

"You were _there_," Nathan responded. "...You know what? You're right. I don't know why I'm bothering." Duke could just hear him going for the button to cut the call.

"Wait, wait, _wait_! Do _not_ hang up on me, Nathan." There was a brief silence where he still half expected to hear the tone of a dead line. "Nate?"

"How are you doing?" Nathan asked, with obvious reluctance. "Still in pain?" Morbid fascination hung in his voice - for what he was missing out on, Duke supposed. Bastard. He fidgeted and tried to think of a sufficiently manly reply, but Nathan added a brief huff and summed up of his own accord, "Right." To Duke's surprise, he asked, "Do you need anything?"

"Do I need anything?" Duke repeated. "At 3.17 in the morning?"

"You _called_." It wasn't difficult to imagine Nathan's scowl. "Or did I misunderstand, and this is another of those middle-of-the-night calls where we exchange insults and you hope to make me sleep through my alarm tomorrow?"

"Has that ever worked?" Duke was genuinely curious, but- "No, _no_, don't hang up! Seriously. I don't feel... right. I'm not fucking around. I wanted to check on you."

"Ask how I feel?"

Nathan's desert-dry sarcasm was something he definitely didn't need at this hour. "Something like that." He was starting to get actively pissed off with this exchange. "At least, I thought you might have something to offer, because you might not feel your body, but you must _know_ your body... Nate?"

"I'm still here." The silence stretched until in typical Nathan fashion it was broken by the declaration, "I'm coming over. Don't fall back asleep."

"...Huh?" Duke realised that his blankness was serenading a dead line.

If Nathan was coming to the _Cape Rouge_ in the middle of the night, he must be equally as unsettled by all this. Annoyingly, Nathan was mobile, and had been since the afternoon. Being an unfeeling prick was a decidedly unfair advantage. Duke thought about it, then instead of sulking made himself get up, get changed and get washed, because no way in hell was he allowing Nathan to out-do him. Or at least to see that he had.

The shower didn't seem to have any benefit beyond getting him clean, unsettling him all the more because he'd never had aching muscles that couldn't be soothed by hot water. He considered that he knew his body pretty well, and he knew when something had gone badly wrong with it. Even if he didn't know what that was.

His efforts left him so exhausted that he returned to the bedroom and crashed out face-down across the bed. Nathan found him there. Duke was half-aware of the slamming and yelling intruding on his stupor but hadn't yet surfaced to the point of prying himself up to go and deal with the obvious disaster - earthquake, fire, the damn ship sinking... Nathan was the only creature Duke knew who could form a stampede of one, with his charging around in pursuit of any given task.

The hand at his shoulder was rough. The concern amid the matching roughness of Nathan's voice speaking his name for the Nth time did nothing to stop Duke cursing him foully as he rolled off the bed gripping his head.

"I said _don't_ go back to sleep." He figured the aggression was Nate's way of hiding the fact he'd had a scare, since it came so soon on the heels of the concern. Duke hated this. They'd always been fiery, but in the last few years it had had real venom. Nathan was looking at his hand, where he'd touched Duke's head, and it glistened with water from wet hair. "You went in the shower at this hour?"

"Sure, Nathan. Because we're not all the fucking Energiser Bunny, up and about and banging _on_ and _on_..." The violence of his retort fell flat as his legs buckled and Nathan had to catch him.

He was pretty grateful Nate didn't take the opportunity to be an asshole, just held Duke up a moment until they were both sure he'd stay that way, then brushed his shoulders off and said, "What the _hell_ happened to us?"

Duke gave up on his bid to prove his greater masculinity against a guy with no nerve endings and perched on the end of the bed. "We need to _find out_. Audrey-"

"Knows, but won't tell me anything," Nathan picked up, sounding intensely pissy. Duke looked him over: movements stiff, but functional. "I think - I don't know _what_ to think. I'd swear she was crying at her desk when I went in today. Hid it fast, but... If this is still some kind of Trouble..."

"Audrey was crying?" Duke repeated.

"I've never seen her like this." Nathan shook his head and leaned in close, raising an emphatic hand. "Whatever happened to us, we're recovering. God knows what's got hold of Parker." He straightened again, hyperactive with agitation. "She sent me away. The Chief's in on it, or just more ready to believe her than me, the speed he flew past me today when I tried to say anything, which actually-" He made a noise of disgust. "Either way, _I'm_ signed off work. And I don't know when they're going to let me back."

Duke was unable to resist a snort of mirth. "Because what would life be worth without all those opportunities for handcuffs and harassment?"

"Don't worry. I don't expect you to understand the value of 'work'," Nathan retorted. "I just want to know what's going on, and you have more clues than I do."

Duke raised his eyebrows. "You mean I'm the one lucky enough to get to feel it all?" _Wow_, that look was hostile.

"Can we take this to a different room?" Nathan asked, gesturing at Duke's rumpled and unmade bed.

"This bothers you?" Maybe he should've stayed in his underwear.

"The smell bothers me," Nathan said cattily, and without asking, leaned over and caught Duke under the arm to heft him up. Duke did notice that Nathan's own balance was still a bit shit, and privately thought that if he were Garland Wuornos, he wouldn't have approved the guy to be back chasing down bad guys either.

"It doesn't smell," Duke defended, though he felt compelled to add, "excessively." Because he _had_ been sleeping in the room for most of twenty four hours and it hadn't been aired.

"Everything smells," Nathan said.

Ah. Okay; it was Nathan's particular brand of weirdness at work, and Duke was familiar with that of old. In school, after the Troubles the first time, he'd been able to identify candy at a distance by scent alone.

"Have you eaten?" Nathan asked, spilling Duke into one of the hard chairs in the kitchen. Bed had been more comfortable.

"What? Because you're going to cook?" This, he had to see.

Nathan turned his back and started opening cupboards. After about a minute of searching, while Duke watched with illicit glee as his shoulders stiffened, Nathan asked, "Don't you have any cans?" He turned back, took one look at Duke's face, and spun away, declaring, "Cereal," and grabbing a packet from a shelf. He dug the milk from the fridge but was pulling a face before he'd even opened the cap to sniff at it. He dunked it straight into the sink.

Duke took pity on him. "I'll have the muesli with yoghurt. Some of that should still be good."

Nathan watched him as though suspicious of a wind-up, but shrugged and shook his head when Duke started to spoon the mixture into his mouth. Nathan turned to pick up the milk carton, scowling at the date. "Thursday. Last things I remember happened Wednesday. What I don't know for sure is if we were out of commission all that time or it's just my memory affected... but I guess we know you weren't buying groceries. I wanted to get a look at the work planner at my desk in the station, but Parker blocked me. I don't suppose you keep a diary we could use to corroborate?"

Duke grunted around the spoon and shook his head. The truth was, he wasn't very hungry, despite what it seemed must have been a long stretch without sustenance. "Not the 'dear diary' type, Nathan."

Nathan muttered, "I should have known it was pointless to come here." He didn't move to leave. Instead he grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl and sank down opposite Duke, picking at the rind with blunt fingers.

"Surprised you don't keep a diary, Mr. Organised. 'Today I arrested three felons and wrote Duke 20 parking tickets. It was the best day ever,' huh, Nate?"

"Funny." But he sat grim and silent, ate the orange robotically, and eventually offered, "Whatever happened... Audrey's completely shut me out. I can't get her to talk about it. She puts everything off to _when I'm recovered_, like that's any excuse for not disclosing where three days of my life went. You and Audrey have a different relationship. Maybe she'd open up more to you."

And wouldn't Nathan love that, if his theory was borne out? Duke doubted it would be, because Nathan and Audrey had that weird Mulder and Scully brain-twin vibe going on. As for 'different relationship', Nathan should know that however Duke flirted, it was a different cop Duke would rather have in his bed.

There was actually no winning way out of this one. "I can try," Duke allowed with a sigh, and eyed the clock. "Not at this time on a Monday morning."

"No." Nathan's twitch suggested he wouldn't want to find out Audrey's reaction to that either. "As soon as it's a reasonable hour."

They sat for a minute. Duke pushed the rest of his muesli and yoghurt away. Nathan picked it up with morbid curiosity, poked the spoon around it, and took a mouthful. He absently took a few more.

Duke frowned at him. "Are you hungry?"

Nathan returned a look with a lot of simmering resentment in it. "I wouldn't know."

Oh... _oh_. Duke hadn't thought of that effect of Nathan's Trouble before. The idea stung. He took the world seriously where food was concerned.

"I like to taste things," Nathan returned, a bit more recalcitrant, recognising the genuine shock. "Sometimes I get cravings for particular types of food. I don't get a sense of discomfort telling me to eat. Just have to remember when I ought to be hungry, and eat."

All of that probably constituted the most Nathan had spoken to Duke about his affliction in three years, and maybe as much as twenty-five.

"I'm... not hungry," Duke offered, feeling like he should be saying something else. "Which is weird, what with it having been at least twenty-four hours, and possibly a lot more."

"See?" said Nathan, finishing Duke's early-early breakfast and shoving the plate away. He piled the orange peel into it. "_Clues_. I may not know what happened, but I don't think we were unconscious all that time. What if we were... under some influence, still walking around? What if whatever got us has Parker, now?"

Duke shuddered. Maybe that was the bone-deep ache of wrongness he was feeling. If something else had been walking around in his skin... "God. You don't think it was another shapeshifter?" But Audrey had barely survived the last one, and it hadn't used her body, just copied a new one for itself based on her. Unless there was more than one type... "Something like... Are we saying something was _wearing_ me?" He clenched his teeth. The explanation felt too good a fit. "Wait. If something had control of us, we could have done _anything_. Maybe that's why Audrey doesn't trust us any more. We did something so terrible she doesn't even want to admit it..."

He didn't want that to be true, but it felt all too possible, and Nathan's slow nod didn't help matters, especially when he considered that Nathan fucking Wuornos was _agreeing with him_.

Duke thought about all the atrocious things he'd seen happen through the influence of the Troubles. Burned bodies and Beattie's children's leftovers of aged corpses, half the town with food poisoning and Eleanor dead at the chameleon's hands. He shuddered again.

What the hell had they _done_?

* * *

There had been a time when a couple of hours to waste aboard the _Cape Rouge_ with Nathan wouldn't have been an awkward prospect, but those days were long gone. Now, it was just frustrating to have him there, prowling restlessly as they awaited the dawn.

Duke filled a couple of big cafetieres with sludge-strong coffee and they moved up top where they could watch the sun rise and there was more room. It felt less like being caged in with an agitated tiger, that way, or at least less nerve-janglingly up-close to the beast.

Watching Nathan pace about the deck, Duke wondered - as was, he was pretty sure, natural and not remotely creepy - what it would be like to have that body pressed to his, now that almost two decades had gone by. They were older. What things had changed? How had age marked Nathan? Hell, he knew his body had changed since he was seventeen. Picked up a bunch of scars, a bunch more tattoos, lost puppy fat and worked hard to replace it with muscle. Nathan didn't strip down however hot the weather, so it was a genuine mystery what lay, these days, beneath his layers of clothes. Duke had reconciled himself to never finding out.

He sipped his coffee and shivered in the morning chill, pulled his woollen jersey closer around him, and folded his arms. Nothing much else to do, he sat back and let his imagination indulge.

Nathan stopped pacing and returned to the table to chug down his mug of coffee. "What the hell are you smiling about?" he demanded, and Duke shook his head and kept smiling until Nathan turned away in disgust.

Slowly the light increased and the coffee went cold. Yellow-orange bands drifted upwards from the sea into the sky, and the water glowed with a cold, pale fire. Nathan sat down for what was probably meant to be just a moment in the chair opposite Duke and fell asleep, head lolling and his mouth open. Apparently he'd been running on his nerves alone... or at least, Duke mentally amended, on his anxieties.

The swift shut-down was both amusing and annoying, as well as a bit worrying, a reminder that the fact Nathan couldn't feel didn't lessen any underlying damage. But Nathan was a bitch to wake up: shaking him wouldn't do it, and Duke didn't think his head could handle yelling. Let the guy sleep. At least right now he was freakin' _still_.

Duke resisted temptation to screw with him while he slept, although his better angels probably only won that fight because he'd have to get up and go _find_ black markers or safety pins or sticky tape. He watched Nathan sleep until the sun was high enough in the sky to demand action and his bladder was complaining about all the coffee.

Duke refilled the cafetiere below deck and returned to waft Nathan's refilled cup under his nose until he jerked awake. "Wakey, wakey, sunshine."

"I fell asleep?" Nathan asked incredulously, narrowly managing to abort his instinctive waking swipe and turn it into a grab for the coffee. _And you let me?_ was the implied criticism. There was always going to be one of those, even when Duke came bearing gifts.

"You looked like you needed the rest. On the bright side, those two hours went by so much quicker." His grin bounced off Nathan's glower.

Nathan gulped the coffee - although, damn it, it was probably still too hot for that. Duke's tired, aching muscles ached even more as he watched Nate go from sleep to hyperactive insanity again, setting the emptied cup down and jerking to his feet. The movements of the _Rouge_ and his numb legs caught him out and he staggered, grabbing the front of Duke's jacket to steady himself.

They eyed each other silently and mutually agreed to make no mention of it.

* * *

Nathan's Bronco was waiting by the marina. Duke personally had his doubts about either of them being in condition to drive, but hell, he wasn't the cop, and was too glad not to be walking to offer any complaint. Nathan drove carefully.

It was still a fraction too early for them to be sure Audrey would be in at the station, but Nathan was impatient to be moving and drove them out to the Kale place where they'd first woken up. They parked and stared at the big house. The long drive and well-cared-for expanse of lawn looked innocent and normal.

After watching for a while, Nathan moved to open the door and get out.

"Wait, what're you - _stop_." Duke lunged across from the passenger seat and grabbed the end of Nathan's jacket before he was gone.

"I saw movement," Nathan said. "Gonna knock on the door and check it out. We didn't see Kale, remember. Whole place felt empty, except for Audrey."

"Seriously?" Duke said. "Doesn't it look bad if this comes across as police harassment? We don't know what _happened_."

"No, we don't," Nathan snapped. "Which is why I plan to find out, and you don't have to come." He broke Duke's grip and slammed the door. Duke watched him stalk rigidly up the long drive and ring the bell after the briefest of detours to a window. The housekeeper answered, opening the door tentatively, and there was no point, from that distance, trying to wind down the car's window to listen to what she said. She looked distressed. Duke could see her shaking her head and trying to field away Nathan's questions. If Nate hadn't wound it up and spun away to walk back when he did, Duke was on the verge of heading out there to try and drag him away.

"You work her over enough?" he asked sourly as Nathan climbed back into the Bronco. "Sure you don't want to go back and soften her up a little more?"

"Montague Kale's dead," Nathan said, and that shut Duke up sharply. "Last Thursday. No known cause, he 'just died'. Heart gave out, maybe, but I couldn't get a definitive answer on that, so it might be me putting words in her mouth."

"He just died," Duke repeated. "Oh, come on! Even Vince and Dave come up with better excuses than that. At least throw in a gas leak."

Nathan grunted. "I'm about ready to kill someone myself if someone doesn't just _spit it out_."

Duke felt his face twist unhappily. "Let's hope you didn't already."

Nathan fell silent a long moment. "She didn't know anything about us waking up in there. Says she doesn't work weekends."

"You believe that?"

"I believe she wasn't there yesterday morning." He sighed and flexed his fingers on the wheel.

* * *

This time, Nathan drove to the station. After cutting the engine, he paused, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles white. "Whatever she tells us, no matter what it is... if we did anything crazy, or catastrophic... _Both_ of us know it wasn't something we could help." He gave Duke an intense look, and Duke nodded, feeling sick to his stomach. He supposed Nathan evaded that discomfort, but maybe not. He wasn't sure how Nathan's affliction worked where it came to psychosomatic symptoms.

Duke was also very surprised. It was a pact of sorts, and it was Nathan suggesting it. "You said it, buddy. Whatever it is, we're in this together."

Nathan gave a double-take and a slow, suspicious nod, as if that wasn't quite what he'd been aiming for, but then shook himself and got out of the car.

Duke followed more slowly. Movement was still an effort, but being able to move under his own steam today was a big improvement.

A nasty feeling stole over him quickly, starting between his shoulder blades and sending chill knives out along his spine. He cast around and discovered that people were _looking_ at them, in creepy, stalkerish, Haven-folk kinds of ways. "Nathan," he urged in a low hiss, and jerked his head. They were picking up stares from a couple of cops leaving the building, and Vince from the newspaper, across the street.

"It's not just Audrey acting strange," Nathan said flatly. "I noticed it yesterday."

And he couldn't have provided some warning that the whole town was treating them like a new freakshow? But then, Nathan had been a freak since he was eight, so people staring at him was probably less alarming. Duke fixed a grin to his face and hissed through his teeth, "_I don't like this_."

"It's not everyone," Nathan said stonily. "I figure... the more Troubles-savvy. Or maybe some of them were involved, saw something. I only know for sure that we're out of the loop. But I'm damn well finding out today." He stomped across the road and up the police station steps. Duke risked a jog to catch up: _definitely_ improving.

"Hey, Nathan," greeted a cop in the corridor. "Chief said you'd be off for a few more days. Sucks, that flu, huh?"

"Kind of what I'm here to see him about," Nathan responded. "Morning, Stan." He obviously had to really try to push that genial greeting out. He moved on past and Duke edged around after him - a few too many uniforms in this place for his liking.

Audrey was in her and Nathan's shared office - the door was shut but they could see her through the blinds, talking to a tired-eyed man, perhaps in his late twenties; dark hair, round face, pleasant enough demeanour. Didn't strike Duke as a dangerous felon, but Nathan hissed a harsh breath through his teeth and pressed Duke back against the wall, out of sight. "Why the hell is she talking to _him_?"

"Who is he?" Duke asked.

"Landon Taylor. He's Troubled." Nathan pulled a weird face but didn't specify, which Duke took to mean it was one of Haven's more _fun_ Troubles.

Whatever the guy was, or did, the conversation was intense. Audrey was pacing and rubbing her head when Taylor eventually left the office, and Taylor looked grim. The dark rings scored around his eyes were too visible despite the distance.

"Wow, that guy has not been getting much sleep recently," Duke observed. He waited, but Nathan grunted and pressed Duke back further into their covering recess as Audrey walked towards the door.

She passed them in the corridor, head down and little attention for her surroundings, fortunately. Nathan removed his hand from Duke's mouth and hustled him into the empty office. Duke stumbled and turned once they were inside. Nathan leaned on the closed door, sweating.

"I love it when you get all handsy and commanding," Duke murmured, slightly breathless from the manhandling now as well as nerves.

"Nothing's funny. Landon-" Nathan screwed his eyes shut and said forcefully, "No. We don't know anything. This is my chance to take a look over my notes for those missing days. You keep a lookout for Audrey coming back." He crossed to his desk and started rummaging through it.

Duke hovered by the door feeling extraneous. "You think he has something to do with all this?" He'd think Nate should be sympathetic enough to what it was like being out of the loop to at least keep him as informed as Nathan was.

"I don't see how. That's what bothers me." Papers rustled. Nathan sank down and his open palms hovered over the desk top. "He could be used for a cover up... Say if one of us... both of us... really did kill someone. Or more than one someone." The computer finished booting up and he tapped on the keyboard, eyes intent. "But Montague Kale's death has been filed. The M.E... that's Julia... it looks like she ruled heart attack."

"Now _that's_ a cover up," Duke said.

"It's a hell of a cover up." Nathan's eyes were widening. "Duke, there were _fourteen_ deaths filed last Thursday. Cause... probable heart attack, though Julia hasn't got to them all yet. Bodies unmarked. Looks like they 'just died', too."

"_Fourteen_?" Duke had been expecting to hear something he wouldn't like, but... "We couldn't cause that."

"Thirteen," Nathan amended. "There's one death by gunshot amongst them."

"Oh, well, then." Because he or Nathan could have done _that_. "That's so much better."

"Shut up," Nathan said tersely. "These all happened Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Funny thing? The addresses for Thursday's victims are clustered around Monty Kale's place. Like it was the epicentre."

"_That's_ the funny thing?" Duke snarked, mouth beating his brain to the punch. He brain coughed up, just about simultaneously, _Oh, thank God_ and _Oh, shit_. "Nate! This wasn't us. There's no way we could have done this! That's not what Audrey was hiding." Excitement and incredulity warred in him. "You know what _does_ make sense? Audrey didn't lie after all. We must have been caught up in it, and she... Audrey found a way to heal us." That was terrifying but at the same time, such a frickin' relief, because they were all right now and it really did explain everything. Even Audrey's strangeness... She'd saved them, her friends, but not the rest. That was enough to make any good-intentioned person crazy. Duke was just happy to be alive, and he would fucking _take it_.

But Nathan was staring at his jubilation with something akin to horror, lips parted and facial muscles frozen. "She didn't heal us."

Duke frowned, because obviously, they were there, and fine, and what were a few muscle aches compared to _dead_? He couldn't believe he'd been griping so much. "Nathan, we're okay."

Nathan was getting up and rooting through his desk, frantic and furious. Duke had never seen him like this before, but the closest was when he'd been hit by the Crazy-Trouble. "Whoa, _wait_!" Duke yelped as Nathan found a penknife in the drawer and flipped it open. "Do _not_ do anything stupid, Nathan!"

Nathan rolled up his sleeve and slashed the knife across his arm.

He dropped the knife and slapped his hand over the cut immediately, eyes tight closed, stance stiff and tense.

Duke stared at the small pile of what looked like sand on the desk. Nathan made a noise, and opened his eyes and his fingers again, letting the sand trickle through from the slice, letting Duke see... He'd exposed fluff and rags along with the dust, but what he hadn't drawn, even a little bit, was normal, red, human blood.

"What the hell is this?" Duke asked. His voice came out little more than a croak. "What is... Will _I_ do that?"

Of course he would. They had said it before they set out for explanations: they were in this together.

Nathan's face had an aching expression on it, like he just didn't know what to do. He moved his hand away from the cut and blankly watched it trickle.

"Nathan," Duke urged. "What did they _do_ to us? What the hell are we?"

"Landon's a taxidermist," Nathan said hollowly, like that was an explan- oh, shit. _Shit_.

"No," said Duke. "You are fucking kidding me. You're _kidding_ me... this is some kind of elaborate set-up. Audrey's giggling around the corner." He waited. Mentally, he _pleaded_ with the world - but his life didn't work like that.

Nathan grinned like a skull. "Audrey didn't save us. She had us... fucking... _stuffed_." Nathan's 'fuck you Haven weirdness' expression had never been better applied.

"Jesus!" Duke grabbed his head and, very abruptly, had to sit down. He pressed his fingertips into his aching forehead, trying to process... "Wait, wait, no. I cannot be _stuffed_, Nate. I _have_ internal organs. I have freakin' bodily functions! Which I exercised before leaving the _Rouge_, and thanks to this fucking discussion, feel a pressing need to exercise again! I drank coffee! I ate! _You_ ate! That's - it's just not-"

_Fucking Haven_, said Nathan's face, and Duke just couldn't argue with that. He stared blankly at Nathan flexing his fingers and watching sand... sawdust... whatever the hell that was trickle from his forearm.

"This is sick," Duke declared. "He'd have had to - I can't even think about it." He cringed away and covered his eyes, not wanting to contemplate being _skinned_, innards discarded and replaced, by some guy he didn't know going over every inch of his dead body, inside and out. "Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_." He felt like he was caught in a mental loop. How the hell was he supposed to accept this? How were any words supposed to encompass...? "Fuck!"

"We're alive," Nathan muttered. Was that supposed to be an 'on the bright side'? Duke's frustration boiled over and he grabbed up a pencil from Audrey's desk and hurled it at Nathan, followed by any other small item within reach.

"Do _not_ fucking try to cheer me up about being a... a _hunting trophy_!"

"Pack it in," Nathan growled back, slapping the last of the thrown objects aside. "_I_ didn't do this!"

Right on cue, Audrey walked back through the door. She froze and gasped. "No! Nathan. Duke. Oh my God." Her hand rose to her mouth, the back of it pressing hard against her lips.

"Audrey." Nathan jerked to his feet almost guiltily.

_Fuck that_, thought Duke, and surged forward to slam his hands down on the desk. "What did you _do_?!"

Audrey's eyes were fixed on Nathan's leaking arm. "You weren't meant to find out like this." She lunged for Nathan's arm, pressing her hands over the cut. Nathan made a noise of protest and struggled briefly before surrendering. "We have to fix this. Duke, pass me some tape."

There was a roll of parcel tape on the desk. Duke made himself move, and not throw it at her, because she had a point. Nathan probably should not be allowed to leak all his insides out onto the police station floor.

"_Were_ we supposed to find out?" Nathan asked roughly, as Audrey dragged a big 'X' of the tape across the wound, pulling the edges of the skin together. "How could you try to _hide_ this?"

She swallowed, and a spark of anger fired up in her at being surrounded by accusation. "It was only until you were recovered enough to hear it! Landon said when it first happened to him, he felt lousy for days. He thought it was from the smoke inhalation at the time, but later, in retrospect... So I wanted to give you the chance without laying that trauma on top of it."

"Wait. This happened to the guy who - the taxidermist?" Duke laughed, crazily. "The taxidermist is stuffed?"

"Runs in the family," Nathan said brusquely.

"...This _fucking_ town!" Duke swung around back to Audrey, moving a stiff extra step to jab a finger in her face. "You're not forgiven. Jesus!" His legs were stiff because they were full of _sawdust_ and _rags_ and who-knew what.

Nathan dragged him away from her, putting his body between them. "Leave her alone. Audrey, what the hell happened? Why'd you... shut me out?" His voice trembled and his hands fisted at his sides.

"You were _sick_," she emphasized, frustration and anger building. "I wanted to... at least..." She ducked her head and grabbed fistfuls of her hair. "I wanted to give you time to feel _normal_. It wouldn't be so bad... if you could see there was no difference first. Landon suggested it, because _he_ had that. He says there isn't a difference. He didn't know for months." Her chest heaved and angry tears sparked in her eyes, catching the glow of the desk lamp. "And yes! I was afraid of exactly this! But do you know what? There are a whole bunch of people in the morgue who didn't get a second chance. They're just _dead_. So try to think about them before you start to complain!"

Nathan confounded Duke's expectation by not reaching for her. His face twisted in various ways. "Tell me the whole story. Who... who was there?" He raised his taped arm. "Does _dad_ know about this?" He paled visibly at the prospect.

"Yeah." Audrey sighed, "the Chief knows. A couple of the guys who... you were _dead_. People saw you. EMTs. Cops. Vince and Dave! To the rest of the town it was passed off as a nerve toxin, and you guys got luckier than the rest. Some... seafood thing. Duke runs a restaurant, after all. But the people who know things, they... know."

Nathan looked away and splayed a hand over his face.

"We're dead," Duke said hollowly. "Wait, the arm with the tattoo... I was supposed to-"

Audrey gave him a triumphant look. "That _proves_ this doesn't count. You must have that death still to look forward to."

"Yay me."

"Piper Taylor lived for years like this, far as we know." Nathan's voice cracked a bit. "While the Troubles were away. Maybe we'll just... return to normal... once the Troubles are over."

Audrey made a noncommittal noise, and Duke had to wonder how much they really knew about this Trouble, whoever Piper Taylor was. "Look," she said grimly, dashing at the edges of her eyes with her knuckles, "I'll tell you everything. I hated hiding this. But not here, please. Let's go somewhere else."

A man would've had to be made of stone to say no. Even Nathan gave her a terse nod after a moment.

* * *

They went to the scrap of grassy park along the road. A trailer was selling donuts and hot dogs, and Nathan bought donuts, dipping into the bag every so often, chewing mechanically.

"The case was waiting for us Thursday morning," Audrey said. "Five people had died during Wednesday night, no mark on their bodies, no explanation." She looked at Nathan.

He shook his head. "I don't remember it at all. Sorry."

"We plotted the deaths on a map and found they'd all occurred within a hundred yard radius. _You_ were positing an actual gas leak." She gave Nathan a hard look. "But there was one guy who lived smack bang in the centre of the death zone who hadn't turned up on the slab. That was Jerry Coggins, Montague Kale's gardener, so we went to talk to him. He didn't know what had happened to his neighbours, just got up and went to work as usual."

Audrey pressed her knuckles hard against her mouth, visibly struggling. "We were suspicious, but we weren't even sure it was a Trouble, you understand? Some... normal, tragic environmental catastrophe. Toxic gas, or water supply contamination... The autopsies hadn't begun. We had to pull in Julia again and it took hours even to sort that out. But I... I should have been more careful, should have taken some kind of precaution. The moment we confronted Coggins about the incident, people started to..." She stared at Nathan, who mirrored the terrible look blankly. "You fell first. Just crumpled next to me. I grabbed Jerry. Maybe it's because I was touching him that it didn't affect me next. I heard Kale's wife screaming, and then the sound cut off. Duke... we'd passed you on the way in, delivering catering supplies. Kale was going to have a party at the weekend, he'd called you in..."

"Some party," Duke murmured, shuddering. "And then I was-?"

"I saw through the window. You collapsed out in the drive. It was spreading and I didn't know how to stop it... I asked Jerry how he'd stopped the episode the night before, but of course, he didn't even know he'd done anything. So I..." She gulped. "I was shouting for him to stop... I suppose it wasn't the most helpful reaction, but I was freaking out, too. I'd just watched both my best friends in this town drop dead." Tears glimmered in her eyes. "I took out my gun and I shot Jerry. But even with Jerry dead, Nathan wouldn't revive. I tried CPR. I tried... Then I ran outside to try Duke, and heard Landon Taylor yelling for help out in the road. He'd been driving by - must have missed it himself by a matter of yards, or maybe it didn't affect him because he's... like he is - and he'd seen one of Kale's neighbours collapse. He was doing pretty much the same thing I was. By that time the backup and the ambulances and everyone and everything were arriving there, but when I told Landon what happened he said-"

She looked at Nathan. "He offered to try to save _you_. You'd helped him get his life back, and if you could give him that pep-talk, then surely you would choose to keep living, even like that."

Nathan grimaced.

Audrey's breath sobbed slightly in the back of her throat as she turned to Duke. He had never seen her like this, nor imagined he ever would see her like this. "You... I said you were a survivor. You'd choose this too. I asked Landon to do it. I was a mess, Duke. I wasn't thinking. Almost the next thing I knew, Landon was long gone with both of you and Vince and Dave were trying to comfort me, and I don't even know where _they_ came from or how they found out."

"Why not fix everyone?" Nathan asked. "If he could bring us back, then..."

"He said," Audrey choked, "that he couldn't work quickly enough. He wasn't even sure that he could do Duke, as well. I begged him."

"This is really hideous." Duke raised his palms to Audrey. "I'm not judging. But it's hideous." She slumped on the seat, head slack on her shoulders. "Landon called on Saturday. He said it was finished and he thought it was going to work. I took you back to Kale's place, hoping I could say you'd had some sort of collapse and send you both home to recover. But when you woke up, you didn't remember being there. Landon says he's never remembered the fire." She sighed. "I should have told you straight away. I can see that now."

"I was going over all kinds of theories," Nathan admitted. "Troubles affecting you, affecting me... Things I might have done that you didn't want to tell me about. I never thought of this. Well. Until I saw Landon come out of my office."

"If you didn't insist on sneaking around when I was only trying to help you..." Audrey started. Nathan abandoned his empty donut packet and twisted sideways on the seat to envelop her in a hug.

A strange, conflicted wave crossed Nathan's expression as his cheek touched Audrey's, and he bent his neck, averting his face from the contact. Duke stared, but it was a minor note, in amongst the rest. Duke wasn't going to do any damn hugging. He needed to think long and hard how he felt about this before he did _anything_ else. He deliberately folded his arms and stood up, wandering a few steps on the grass and keeping his back to Nathan and Audrey.

"So what now?" he asked, and risked a brief peek behind to determine it was safe. Nathan finished disentangling himself with faint embarrassment. "We're supposed to just carry on? Pretend like we're not fake people, or... reanimated stuffed corpses?"

"That's the advice I gave Landon Taylor," Nathan said unsteadily, staring at his arm.

"That's _stunning_ advice, Nate."

"Taylor has a kid to live for." A spark of Nathan's aggression returned. "He doesn't know that his dad is... whatever the hell this is." He shook himself and turned on Audrey, one hand raised imploring. "I _need_ to come back to work. This - I can deal with this so long as I don't have to think about it, so long as I can do the things I normally _do_. Audrey..."

"I'll talk to the Chief," she said, subdued.

Duke scowled. "Well, then I guess I'll just be on my way."

"Duke, _no_-"

He stamped away from them, ignoring Audrey's protest. Fucking Audrey Parker. Fucking Troubles. Fucking Haven. Why the hell had his dad wanted him to come back to this place? It was like flinging your kid at the front lines, and look at the result! Shit like _this_. Now he was screwed, well and truly screwed, and _dead_. Technically. What the hell was a man supposed to do when he didn't even have internal organs any more?

Simon Crocker never had been that great a dad.

He heard a burst of activity behind him and sped up his steps. A quick look over his shoulder showed to his surprise that it was Nathan, and not Audrey, coming after him. He continued for about twenty yards more then faltered at the edge of the road, where Nathan caught up.

"Thought you were going back to work," Duke said sourly.

"Probably not yet." Nathan's scowl told his opinion of that. "Duke, I'm not going to defend what she did."

There was a surprise. "Go on."

"I mean it. I gave Landon this pep talk about... carrying on and being 'magic' and how it's okay to be a freak, and now I don't even... I'm not going to be able to face the guy." He shook his head and made a noise of frustration. "We said it before. We're in this together. I'm not going to let you go charging off and do something crazy while you're in this state of mind."

Which was funny, because that was Duke's feeling about how Nathan usually dealt with the world.

Duke grinned fakely and gripped Nate's shoulder buddy-fashion. "Good for you, Nate. But I need to go and get drunk. Assuming I _can_ still get drunk. Since I can still pee, I'm gonna go for it."

Nathan rolled his eyes, but then apparently thought about it and nodded. "That sounds like a plan I could get behind."

"Wow. Nathan Wuornos, wild man."

Nathan dashed the hand from his shoulder with annoyance and shoved Duke out of his personal space, and Duke _almost_ didn't register how momentous this was, with everything else on his mind. Nathan had agreed to share a drink with him. Nathan had come after him, presumably out of concern, and reiterated that they were together in this no matter what.

Duke mainly noticed that Nathan's skin was warm, and felt alive, and grabbed after the brief contact, seizing his forearm between both hands, just beneath the tape. Nathan screwed up his eyes and returned a hostile stare as he wrested his arm clear. "Warm," Duke said, realising he probably did owe an explanation. "Your skin's still warm. In case you... didn't know. You feel alive." He poked his own wrist, just to establish... Yeah. "How is that possible?"

"Haven," Nathan said, shaking his head. "Troubles. Who knows?" He returned his hand to Duke's arm to foil a stumble, with an impatient sigh. "Come on, let's get that drink. I hope it's something strong."

"I own a _bar_," Duke reminded him. "We can pretty much take our pick."


	2. Chapter 2

Duke figured it was cause to break out the good stuff when they were effectively drinking at their own wake, and Nathan was fond of scotch. Even though it was quiet at the _Gull_ at this time of day, Duke had no desire to linger around other people, so he grabbed the bottles and let Nathan drive them back to the _Rouge_.

He'd been _dead_. Was still dead, technically, because in his book _stuffed_ sure as hell wasn't any definition of _alive_. Unspeakable things had been done to his body. _Unspeakable_.

"Well, here goes." On his kitchen counter, far too early in the morning, Duke filled two shot glasses with 21-year-old scotch that deserved better, slammed the bottle down then drained his glass. "Drink to the first day of the rest of your death, Nate." He turned to Nathan, offering the second glass. Nathan stood like a shadow, his eyes like coals. He took the glass carefully in his fingertips. "Come on, man! We're walking corpses! Who wouldn't drink to that?"

"Don't think about it that way." Nathan was trying, but he lacked conviction. He slipped the liquid into his throat in a smooth, slow motion, closing his eyes and visibly savouring as he followed the flavour down. Duke had to wonder how much he got of that whiskey burn without being able to feel. His face looked almost pornographic, though. You had to peg something amiss when Nathan was enjoying the finer things in life more than Duke.

But of course: not alive.

Nathan was still out to prove him wrong. "You didn't meet Landon before knowing any of this. You couldn't tell. _He_ couldn't tell."

To Duke, the guy had looked like a walking mannequin, and his estimation of Nathan's ability to read someone else's physicality wasn't high. "Yeah, but we know, and so do plenty of other people. Vince and Dave!"

Nathan tipped one shoulder. "We know they can keep secrets."

Duke snorted. "And my body _feels_ like it's been wrung inside out, stuffed with fucking rags and sawdust, and sewed up again. Sorry." He tagged that on as he realised who he was talking to. "It's like a..." 'Violation' came to mind pretty strongly, but that was too melodramatic a sentiment for the audience and Nathan would laugh at him. He shook his head and reached for the bottle again.

"Slow down," Nathan said.

Duke stared at him. "You're taking this with all the emotion of an action figure." He caught himself just in time, because 'puppet' was a far more apt description for Nathan now than before, but Duke didn't want to go there.

"No," Nathan's fist clenched at his side. With his other hand he groped to put the shot glass clumsily back on the table. "Yes. I have to." He rolled his eyes wearily at the perplexed twitch of Duke's frown. "I have to because not five weeks ago I calmly told Landon that his life wasn't over just because he was like this. So either I'm the biggest hypocrite who ever walked the Earth, or I'm _dealing_ with this."

"Yeah? You already know which one gets my vote."

"Give me another drink. Find some better glasses this time. If this is our wake, we deserve more style."

"Says you."

But Duke complied and they both settled in some chairs, not that comfort made much difference to Nathan _or_ to Duke at the moment, since every position hurt. Nathan sat like a robot, the only sign of life when he periodically raised the glass to his lips. Duke sat silent, trying to take it all in, but ended up sometime later thinking instead about how silence was something he and Nathan just didn't do together, and how Nathan was so determined not to freak out about this that it seemed he wasn't going to let himself feel _anything_.

Duke was offended by the idea of Nathan's numbness taking root inwards, because even if he was fake inside now as well as out, that didn't mean he had to be a total blank. Considering the combative nature of their relationship, there probably _was_ room for some uncertainty whether it was Nathan's calm while Duke was freaking out that was actually intolerable. So Duke was either being a massive dick or a responsible friend when he poked, "You know how taxidermy works?"

Nathan regarded him over a near-empty glass, baleful expression at a simmer. "I know it's not my preferred topic of conversation right now."

"Well, first they fucking _skin_... the animal. All those bits and pieces that used to be inside, like organs and bones and blood, are just waste product, chucked out with the trash. Then they stretch and hang the skin out and cure that sucker to preserve and strengthen it..." Nathan's face was screwed up in disgust and God knew what his own face looked like. It was revolting, was what it was.

"-Oh my God." Duke broke off. His goal had been to make Nathan feel something, but it seemed he'd only succeeded in freaking himself out worse. _God_. He didn't do well with the blood-and-guts stuff at the best of times, and how the hell was he supposed to live in - to _occupy_ this body, knowing all that had been done to it?

Standing up probably wasn't his best idea, since sitting down he at least had less distance to fall if his panic attack were to turn into an embarrassing faint. But Nathan was up, too, grabbing his arms. "Take it easy."

"Easy!" Duke choked. He stumbled sort of through Nathan, trying to get past him, inadvertently dragging him along. "I'm so fucking screwed. I bet there are - I haven't even checked - _seams_ or something. I bet we don't even look _real_, naked. You couldn't do that to a person and not leave a whole lot of ugly marks." He towed Nathan along to his bedroom and a full length mirror, trying to unfasten his clothes as he went.

Nathan swore at him and hung on. Duke had the notion that Nathan was actually still holding him upright, which would explain the dedication. When they got to the bedroom and Duke could cling to the wall or sprawl against the edge of his bed, Nathan let go and stepped back, watching with eyes that were withholding some kind of judgement. Duke tossed his shirt in a corner, twisting and turning, trying to see all of his back in the mirror. "Check me," he urged Nathan.

"Duke, there's nothing there," Nathan said, voice flat as ever, the fucking _machine_, and Duke was putting on this performance in front of the person least likely to actually grasp a human emotion.

But Duke needed to know even if Nathan didn't, and embarrassment could come later. Right now he only cared about the facts written on his skin, underneath his clothes. He'd showered earlier, but he hadn't known to look. Hadn't known there was anything to look _for_. He started stripping off his pants. Nathan's reflection in the mirror was rolling its eyes a lot. Duke threw his shoes and socks at him.

"Duke, I can't see anything." Nathan's eyes were wider than they needed to be. Did that mean he saw something he wasn't owning up to? "Maybe the Taylor's family Trouble repairs the damage done by the taxidermy process. Maybe the process doesn't even work that way when Landon does it."

Duke stumbled into Nathan and clutched at his collar. "I want to see. That means you, too, buddy." If Nathan had any marks, that would prove he was lying. Duke pulled at Nathan's shirt, ripping a few buttons.

Nathan sighed, set his mouth into a thin line and nodded. "All right. If that's what it takes to settle this." He shrugged out of his shirt as Duke pushed the edges over his shoulders. First thing Duke saw was the bullet scar, not even two months old and still pink.

"Whoa." He touched his fingers to it. "That's an _actual_-"

Nathan caught his hand and irritably pushed it away. "Not what we're doing." He turned his back on Duke, lifting the stubby tail of his hair, not that he really needed to, and bent his back so that his spine curved and every rib, mark and old scar was picked out from his skin. Shit, Nathan was clumsy. "Any seams?" he asked with challenge.

"No... no." Duke grabbed at Nathan's jeans, curling hands over the button and zipper from behind, and Nathan bucked backward into him and swore violently. "You want to prove it to me then prove it," Duke snapped, fighting back. "I've seen your body before."

Nathan got his hands _off_, wrenching them painfully as he did, because Nate was still the stronger of them at the moment. He turned and stepped away and hissed, "_Okay_, if it'll stop this lunatic obsession. But I'll do it myself." He bent to remove his shoes, then shucked down jeans and underwear together and kicked them loose.

"Socks," said Duke, who wouldn't believe Landon hadn't gotten it all out and back in again through the soles of their feet, though he could see both his own, if he curled his knees up and strained to look, and they looked okay.

Nathan gave a very concentrated glower, but pulled his socks off and after a quick check of the soles of his own feet - see, _he_ didn't believe it either - made a full turn. It was a bit quick for Duke to really see, so he followed Nathan around and set his hands on the back of his shoulders to push him in place, then slid them down the back of his body. Knowing there was no way for Nathan to tell he was doing it, and therefore it wasn't like the presumption mattered, he tentatively parted his ass-cheeks on the way back up, just in case a row of stitches were hiding in there, and paid some attention to the inner thigh. No seam...

"_Duke_," Nathan growled, and Duke looked up and realised that the mirror had shown Nathan everything.

Duke might have reddened a _little_ bit. Mostly he owned to the moment and grinned.

"Well? Do I have any... marks?" Nathan's brusque impatience - and for that matter his uncharacteristic willingness to strip - made Duke realise he didn't and couldn't know what state his body was in, had even less idea than Duke did, but was sitting on his freakout a whole lot better.

Duke admitted slowly, "No marks." He sighed, stepped back and slumped down on the end of the bed with his legs wide and head hanging, ready to admit he'd made an ass of himself. The Troubles worked to their own rules. Who was to say they couldn't be indistinguishable from life, like this? Until, of course, someone like Nathan cut down through the skin. He eyed the 'X' of tape on Nate's arm. It was a crappy fix, and they were going to need to do better.

He said, "I wonder if we have Landon repair that himself, it looks anything less like some horror movie scar."

Nathan's face flickered minutely. "Really don't feel like talking to Landon. Besides, he's got one of his own. I'm not sure damage like this does anything other than stick around."

"We could ask," Duke said glumly. He stared at his hands, rested between his knees. Flexed his fingers. Thought about his own flesh and blood, bone and sinew, no longer inside there. Skin. He was just _skin_. All the rest had been scraped out and thrown away.

If damage they acquired now didn't heal, Nathan was _fucked_, he thought, and kept it private.

It was more depressing than it should be. Like he still had any involvement or investment in Nathan Wuornos' life.

A shadow loomed over him. Startled, Duke looked up.

Nathan was really close. He tentatively reached down and rested his hands on Duke's shoulders. He licked his lips, and Duke followed the slow flick of that pink tongue almost hypnotically. Things didn't really _register_ properly, because he'd have known where he was if someone else had been this close and looking at him that way, but this was Nathan and that rendered such an explanation impossible.

Still, Nathan pushed him backwards to a soft landing on the mattress, hesitation disappearing in a decisive move, and climbed on top. A hand under Duke's hip guided him further onto the bed, rucking up the sheets. Then Duke felt the brush of naked thighs against the outside of his own as Nathan straddled him and, astonishingly - because the biggest part of him was still expecting a blow, expecting to fight - Nathan leaned in, seized Duke's hair between his fingers, and used the leverage to kiss him hard.

Okay, the kiss was kind of like a fight.

Duke made an unintelligible noise and strove for words. "Nate. What are you _doing_?"

Nathan pulled back.

"Reclaiming our bodies," Nathan stuttered, embarrassment turning his cheeks pink. "Nuh. It's a bad idea." He almost swung away, but Duke saw him bracing to do it and grabbed and clung on for dear life.

"It's not," he said thickly, burying his face in Nathan's neck. "It's really not." He trailed kisses more like bites around Nathan's jawline, and thrust his hips upwards, aiming for where Nathan's groin straddled tantalisingly above him. "Fucking brilliant idea. Best you've ever had." God, it had been a _really_ long time.

Nathan tasted the same as he remembered, plus whiskey, but the response of his lips was erratic, different. He'd never kissed Nathan when he couldn't feel, and when they were this close, Nathan had fewer ways to cover the deficit. Duke thought Nathan might pull away once he realised, but he didn't. He pressed Duke down in the bed, grinding their bodies together. The unmistakable sensation of Nathan's cock, hard and hot, sliding against his own made Duke grin. "Checking out that other bodily functions still work?" he asked.

"Much more interesting ones." Nathan raised himself on hands and knees to look down between their bodies, then dived back in. His hand found Duke's hardening erection, lining them up better. Duke felt all of Nathan's length against his own and groaned.

So, Nathan still functioned. Duke marvelled. It had never been a given. In fact, he'd thought... "Thought you didn't do this anymore," he gasped. _Thought_ was whiting out. There was no space for _thought_. Duke wrestled and rolled them over, and Nathan rolled them over again, ending up back on top with a knee between Duke's legs this time. He pressed a wet thumb against Duke's ass, letting it sink in slow.

It had been a long time since they'd done this, but not that long. "You are _not_ gonna fuck me on spit and whiskey," Duke grunted, and desperately flailed his arm behind him, sending most of the contents of the nightstand onto the floor. His fingers hit a tub and he hurled it in the direction of Nathan.

"Hope it's not hair gel," Nathan said, daubing it over his fingers. A moment later, he slipped those fingers into Duke's ass, pushing and stretching just a little too much too soon, but it felt cool and good. Duke groaned and bucked against Nathan as the fingers did their work, trying to strike an angle where he could rub his cock against any part of Nathan, needing the contact.

If he'd really thought about it, he might have balked at the idea of Nathan inside him when Nathan couldn't feel, when he already ached to the bone over his whole body. Except whiskey and lust were making his decisions, and were obviously better at it, because they said he wanted this. When Nathan's hands tried to move him, he rolled over obediently, giving better access to his ass. He swore softly as six foot plus of warmth and firm muscle pressed close over his back and he felt Nathan's cock slowly sink into him.

Nathan paused and said, voice wavering, "You tell me if anything's wrong, if anything hurts."

"Anything hurts and I will make sure you fucking know about it," Duke said, and ground back. The sensation drew a sharp breath from him. Nathan thrust into the move with a high, desperate noise like he really couldn't have held back any longer. Duke had harboured an unkind scepticism about what Nathan could still get out of sex - not that _any_ of that had been sour grapes - but he was clearly getting plenty out of this. That erection wasn't a product of Duke's imagination. He felt the burn of it as his body adjusted.

Nathan's arms braced past Duke's ribs to the mattress and he felt the tickle of hair and brush of stubble on his shoulder, a scrape of teeth he didn't think was deliberate. He managed to change his automatic yelp of pain at the nip into, "Holy crap!" Didn't want Nate to get the wrong idea.

'_Holy crap_' summed it up pretty well, considering that Nathan was an unfeeling blunt object, these days, and the last person Duke would have predicted to experience sex that fried his brain with. Moving slow and forceful together, their bodies shuddered in unison. It seemed to last both an age and a suspended moment, pushing back onto Nathan while Nathan thrust to meet him. Until finally Nathan slumped, his weight bearing both of them down, and Duke felt the pressure inside him start to relax.

Since returning to Haven he was no longer used to this. Small fucking towns and it was easier and more stress-free, if you didn't mind which sex your bed partners were, to pick up women. He'd forgotten the weight and physicality of another man with him in bed.

He felt Nathan's fingers fumble across his thigh, searching for his cock. Duke wriggled his fingers between Nathan's to guide him and they finished the job together. Duke was almost there, practically spent already.

Nathan groaned into his shoulder. The sound had a note of disgruntlement and Duke really hoped they hadn't got to the regret and recriminations part already. As if to refute their reported physical status, Nathan felt like a furnace against his back. Duke found it just as boggling to remember Nathan was unable to feel any of that body heat himself.

Duke rolled over, reluctant to face whatever expression Nathan was wearing.

Nothing scary awaited him, and the look on Nathan's face softened further as they faced each other, so maybe that noise had only been distress at being unable to _see_. Nathan ran both palms up Duke's shoulders, for all the world like he could feel it, applying pressure to the skin and watching it wrinkle and distort under his touch. His face twisted into a wry, tiny smile.

"Why'd you need to get so many tattoos?" It was only a small grumble he dredged up, after all.

Duke shrugged. "Mementos of here and there, that felt right at the time." Last one had been five years ago, so maybe he'd lost the impulse to decorate his skin by now. He poked the pink bullet scar on Nathan, and a reasonably big slice above his nipple. "Not like you've been shirking on the body modifications either."

"Not my choice," Nathan asserted. "I try to keep away from assholes with guns and knives."

"Buddy, you chose your job." A job that was kind of asking for it, for someone with Nathan's peculiar disability. Duke felt fear run through him, reliving his earlier dark thoughts.

Seriously, was that all it took? One roll in the hay after nearly twenty years and his subconscious was already worrying like he was married to the guy? But then there were some old flames that burned with you for fucking ever, and Nathan always had been Duke's brightest. First and brightest.

He was going to have to tread carefully, because this had been a fraught situation and there'd been alcohol, and who knew whether Nathan felt anywhere near the same?

Nathan kissed him again, then pulled back and played with Duke's hair, running it through his fingers.

"I am right in thinking you can't feel that?" Duke posed, hoping it wouldn't be interpreted as a criticism.

"I haven't miraculously started to feel again after being stuffed," Nathan confirmed.

"Because I didn't think you did this. I wasn't sure you _could_ do this, with the... not-feeling thing, but I was damn sure you _didn't_ do this." Duke watched his face closely.

"I... a couple of weeks ago, I tried." Nathan puffed out an uncomfortable breath. "With Jess." Duke had been aware of Nathan's brief attempt at dating again, but hadn't realised it had gone that far. "Properly tried, Duke, don't look at me like that. Then Parker interrupted and - it was right before Jess left. But it was enough to make me realise sex was at least... possible."

So Duke hadn't been the first to break down those walls. Maybe he should send some flowers to the chick who'd paved the way. He grunted brief laughter and they rolled apart. Nathan half sat up, leaning back on his hands, legs sprawled, while Duke started to register all the aches in his body which had not been helped by sex, though endorphins had made him not care too much about them and he was still floating on a bit of that haze.

He didn't have to look too far for distraction. Their bodies really were different from how they used to be, he mused in a contented haze. Nathan was solid and trim, and not actually as skinny as he always looked in the sort of clothes he chose to wear, a lot more filled out than at seventeen. He hadn't the degree of muscle definition of someone who worked out, but Duke hadn't expected that. Nathan was always at work, and his chosen sport was _golf_, for fuck's sake. That was fine. Duke would take him natural and unassuming.

Nathan was returning the inspection, and Duke wasn't modest enough to have to wonder if he liked what he saw.

It was only then that Duke really remembered why they had ended up doing this in the first place. Maybe for the first time ever, Nathan had actually had a brilliant plan, because Duke felt a hundred times better about his body now than half an hour ago. Even with all the aches, it was _singing_ at him.

"We could be dead now," he murmured, "and we'd never have done this again." It put things in perspective.

"I can't say I'd rather not be normal-" There was a touch of hesitation in Nathan's voice. His 'normal' would never be normal to start with. "But I... don't regret that." He shot an unnerved look Duke's way, as if admitting so much was a step too far. "Made me feel more real." His eyes averted.

Duke considered not even having sensation to reassure himself that he was still alive, and felt an unpleasant twist in his stomach. "You felt plenty real," he said, rolling back over to grab at Nathan's legs, shedding the lingering threads of lassitude. "How about we work on making you feel a bit more real?"

Abruptly, he _wanted_ Nathan, the desire almost consuming - almost twenty saved-up years of it, after all - _needed_ to take him as he'd thought he'd never have chance to again, and see what he could get past the infuriating wall of his Trouble. After what they'd already done, it was going to take a while to work up to, but he could cope with that.

"Unh," grunted Nathan, as Duke yanked his legs and flattened him to the bed. "Audrey..."

Duke had his hands on Nathan's torso and his knees around Nathan's hips, and what part Audrey Parker had in that scenario, Duke had no clue. He leaned down and worried into Nathan's neck with his lips.

"No," Nathan hissed impatiently, with a definite edge of horror, and grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him up. "_Audrey_."

There was a little perky tap on the skylight above as Nathan pointed, and Duke cricked his neck jerking it up too fast. That entertained face, a little startled, but _very_ interested, peeking at them intently through the window... Oh, _shit_. "How'd she get up there?" Duke asked stupidly.

"How does she get anywhere?" Nathan shot back. He fumbled off the bed and grabbed for his clothes. Audrey offered them a tentative wave then disappeared from the window. She must have knocked and they hadn't heard... which wasn't hugely surprising.

_Fuck_! Now Audrey knew, Nathan was going to freak out, and Duke wasn't going to have the chance to claim him back. He bounced off the bed, moving too fast for his sore body, and snaked his arms around Nate from behind as he was pulling his jeans up. "This is not over." Duke rubbed his face right up to Nathan's ear. "We're picking this up later."

"All right," Nathan said huskily.

Duke couldn't resist groping him, then using that touch to guide Nate's body back against his own.

"Uhn..." Nathan stuttered, eyes fixed downwards. "Damn it, Duke, we have to deal with Audrey right now."

They stumbled onto the deck still rearranging clothes and fastening buttons, what buttons they had left, no dignity intact. Audrey raised her eyebrows, although that quirky expression was a great improvement from earlier. Her eyes were still red-rimmed. Maybe Duke could start to forgive her a little for choosing to make him into something other than human, if it had brought Nathan back to him after all these years. "You two... working things out?"

Nathan's face was traffic-light-red. "It's not - not like that." Which, _really_, Nate? She'd seen them stark naked and climbing all over each other, on the verge of very dirty things. That was not a position you backed down from with a 'who, me?'

"Trying to prove signs of life," Duke said more stonily. He wasn't going to apologise. "How come the interruption?" That part was definitely not forgiven.

"There's a Trouble. The Chief doesn't want Nathan back on duty yet, but I thought it might... take your minds off things... to have a ride along."

"We were managing to do that pretty well ourselves. On both counts," Duke said, provoking Nathan into a coughing fit that made him look like a struggling asthmatic until he got a grip on himself.

"What's the problem?" he asked, dredging up his best gruff, Clint Eastwood tones.

"It's up on Bloy's Cliff. I'm not sure of all the details, but it sounded like one of ours." Audrey leaned forward and sniffed. "Have you been drinking?"

"Not nearly so much as we could've been drinking, sweetheart," Duke said. Actually, considering where they'd ended up, they had done remarkably little drinking.

Audrey tipped her head judgmentally but evidently concluded they were sober enough. "Okay. I'm driving anyway." She gestured toward her little grey rental. "That's if you want to go? Because if you're busy..."

She waited, looking at Nathan and not Duke, like she'd already sussed that she could count on Duke to follow Nathan wherever he went, at the moment.

...Fuck it, he _wasn't getting away_. They were this close, _this_ close, to having something again...

Nathan looked between them and Duke willed him to say 'screw the Trouble'. He didn't. "The Chief doesn't want me back?"

It would take someone who knew him to recognise the disguised hurt in his voice.

Damn it.

"I think he's... worried, more than anything." Audrey took a tentative stab at comfort. "It's not unreasonable of him to want to gauge the physical repercussions of this before he puts you back on active duty."

But Audrey was offering a case, against the Chief's express wishes, and Duke knew how this would go even before Nathan said, "Duke doesn't have to come," and looked back at him with a trace of apology.

"Oh, hell no," Duke said. "You are not ditching me now, Nathan. Get in the damn car."

"I'd say I'm surprised, but... I'm not, really," Audrey observed, watching Duke's hand fall on Nathan's shoulder as he herded him into the back seat, providing an extra push to stop him clocking his numb head on the vehicle's bodywork. "I figured there had to be more between you guys than some schoolyard vendetta."

"You don't know what we used to get up to in the schoolyard," Duke responded, and from inside the car, Nathan growled at him to shut up, like there _hadn't_ been a time Nate was the one leading the charge for cigarettes and blow jobs behind the gym building.

* * *

Nathan recovered his prickliness during the car journey, piling it on like a shield, and Duke could feel the distance between them expanding across the back seat. Even if Nathan probably needed that to get into the mindset for work, Duke couldn't help but feel his own fears grow in response. He wanted to grab Audrey and shake her.

But he had needed that interlude on the boat to convince him he could resume life again. He had to accept that this was probably what Nathan needed to achieve the same, even if he wasn't freaking out over it, yet: Nathan needed to _work_.

Damn him.

Duke had also realised it was early afternoon and he'd had only sex and whiskey for lunch, but that complaining about it was not going to get him anywhere productive now. They were already too far out of town to ask to pull over to grab snacks. The fact he still wasn't hungry didn't change his desire to make a point of _eating_.

Bloy's Cliff was a rock pinnacle, harshly exposed to the elements, dropping from an overhang to the sea forty feet below. On top of it perched a handful of determined houses that weren't arranged in anything like a line, but were still generally referred to as a street.

The wind whistled around the car, rocking it as Audrey drew them to a halt. They had to wrestle with the doors to get out. Elsewhere, it had not been too bad a day, but this was one of those spots where the weather was permanently sour.

Audrey walked around to Nathan. Duke didn't hear what she said, only Nathan's reply of, "No, I'm all right," a pause, and then his belligerent continuation: "I keep _telling_ you I'm all right. I don't need - the only thing I _need_ is for you to treat me normally."

He backstepped as Audrey reached up to put a hand on his shoulder, and she stared at him, eyes widening a fraction. Duke still didn't know what was going on there, but he thought it had been going on before their current problems started.

Then he saw the crows, and whatever weirdness lay between Audrey and Nathan was scattered from his thoughts.

There were dozens of them, perched on trees and wires and the low roof of the nearby house. It didn't seem a natural place for them to be, because they had to struggle to be there at all, feathers ruffling and feet shifting, straining against the wind. Rows of jet black birds crowded every available surface, their beady eyes watching.

Duke shuddered. "Fuck. I'm in a Hitchcock movie."

One of the birds flapped erratically down and landed on the grey roof of Audrey's car. It gave him a direct look and a raucous caw, then its feet pattered as a gust of wind blew it sideways and it struggled for purchase on the shiny surface.

Duke watched it warily, but it didn't attack, just stayed there looking at him.

Nathan swore suddenly, and Duke turned to see him flailing an arm. One of the birds had landed on his shoulder. The aggressive movement sent it to a more wary distance, settling on a gatepost a few feet away. "What the hell is this?"

"Our sort of puzzle," Audrey confirmed in a low voice.

A woman came down to open the garden gate for them. The birds appeared to have no interest in her. She was perplexed but professional in a pants suit, with fluffy strawberry-blonde hair and a stethoscope around her neck. The birds had no interest in Audrey, either, leaving her alone while she introduced herself to the doctor and flashed her badge, but as Duke and Nathan tried to enter the gate several of the crows from the fence closed curiously in. Duke edged one away with his boot while flapping his arms to scare the rest. He and Nathan luckily remained a side interest to the birds' eerie focus upon the house, but it made him wary. Any sign they were going to be mobbed by hundreds of the things, and he was out of there.

"They were all here when I came to see Mr Garbutt on my rounds," said the doctor. She'd introduced herself to Audrey as Dr Peters. "It's strange. Not that animals acting weird in this town is all that strange. The paper's always talking about gas leaks, but I don't think it's the man-made infrastructure. Got to be the geology. Gas pockets under the ground, minerals seeping out of the rocks into the water supply... You only need to check the historical records to see that Haven's been too weird for too long."

At his side, Nathan grunted, and Duke supposed it was as good a lie to tell yourself as any. "Creepy," was his own verdict, raised on second thoughts to, "Fucking creepy."

"Wait until you see them out back." The doc paused in the doorway, frowning at both men. Nathan did a small double-take, lost without a badge to flash. Audrey shook her head and waved the GP onward.

"Looks more like a job for animal control," Duke muttered, leaning in to Nathan.

He got back an are-you-kidding? glower. "It has to be a Trouble. Look at them all." Nathan closed the door behind them with difficulty and left the crows scraping at the small window next to it.

Duke averted his eyes and did his best to ignore them.

"Dr Peters! Dr Peters! Something's wrong..." A desperately worried little old lady hurried out on to the hallway and urged the doc back into the same room. The old woman wrung her hands while the doc examined the frail old man lying in the bed there. The doc started to shake her head grimly.

Audrey seized Duke and Nathan's arms and slid her eyes to the windows where hordes of the crows perched. With a last glance at the body of Mr Garbutt, she dragged both of them out of the room.

In the hallway, Nathan murmured, "Crows are a death-omen in some cultures."

"Maybe that came from a Trouble like this one." Audrey kept her voice hushed. "Let's get outside." The air seemed thick and choking in the small house.

The crows were outside, but the dead body was inside, so Duke was willing to opt for the crows. The three of them spilled out of the front door, Nathan gulping for breath like that had been a particular trial for his working senses, and they found the majority of the birds were simply gone. The few remaining sidled close and Audrey shooed them off.

"Death omens," Duke gritted out, un-charmed. Audrey looked pale and unhappy.

"I think we confuse them," Nathan tried. "We should be dead and we're not. We're not going to be anytime soon." He shot Duke a hard look.

"I'm sorry," Audrey scraped her hands through her hair, distressed. "I didn't know it would be something like this."

"The population of this town are just dropping like flies this week," Duke said, with a bitter bark of laughter. "So tell me, resident experts: are the crows an _omen_, or did they kill this guy? Will they kill us? Oh, wait - I forgot."

"Don't." Nathan grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, leading him away from Audrey, out of the gate and to the car, where he backed Duke up against the hard metal. "She is _trying_. This has been a trauma for her, too."

Duke stretched his jaw into what he figured could entirely appropriately be called a death-mask grin. "I know she's very cute and there's all that winsome FBI-cop charm. But she had us _stuffed_, Nate! Personal fucking boundaries! Did you really want to spend the rest of your life _dead_?"

Nathan fingers curled in his collar. "Do you really wish she hadn't done it? She saved us."

"She saved _something_. Are we alive? Are we us? Shit, maybe we're just stuffed mannequins with a collection of stale memories."

Nathan flinched, and _ow_, because that came with a reflexive tightening of his fingers at Duke's neck. "What about back on the boat?" Nathan hissed. "Was that real? Is _this_?"

Duke got the impression that Nathan opted to kiss him, if mashing his lips over Duke's quite so violently could truly be deemed a 'kiss', because he was at a loss for anything else to do.

Maybe right after the first time Nate had slept with him in nearly twenty years wasn't the wisest moment to imply that Nathan was a pod person. Even if Duke had been implying that for years, in some way or other. Nathan resorting to sexual wiles instead of violence to try and get what he wanted had to be a sign he was nearing the end of his tether, if not a sign of the apocalypse. He pulled back leaving Duke's lips smarting. "Did that feel real? You'll have to tell me, since I don't know."

Ouch.

Nathan backed off disgustedly at the lack of answer. "Fuck you. I'm not sorry to still be here." He turned and started to stalk away. Since they were already at the car and they were a hike from town by foot, Duke didn't know where he thought he was going.

"_Nate_." Duke was so not done with this, but he knew when he was beat. "I'm not sorry you're still here, either, all right? If it helps, I'm pretty sure no mere dummy could fake being this much of an asshole. I _know_ that's one hundred percent genuine Nathan Wuornos."

Nathan covertly flipped him off and shot a steely look past Duke, who followed his gaze to where Dr Peters had ventured out and was soberly exchanging words with Audrey. Duke bit his tongue and kicked at a crow strutting too near. He was chastened enough to obediently walk to the car when Nathan held the door open for him and climb in. Nathan closed the door then turned around and leaned on it, waiting for Audrey.

Bastard. Way to get rid of a guy, Duke thought, but gnashed his teeth and seethed in silence, because causing a scene at some poor old bugger's death bed was, on reflection, tasteless.

He leaned to peer around Nathan at the conversation Audrey and the doctor were having, but apparently it had been short, because Audrey was already walking grimly back to them. Nathan finally went around to the other side of the car and got in. "Did I say _asshole_?" Duke began, "Because-"

"_Shh_." That was an actual hand slapped over Duke's mouth. Annoyed, he grabbed it by the wrist and dragged it clear - and since Nate being that touchy in the first place without it involving fisticuffs was rare, kept it. Nathan was distracted enough to let him, leaning forward oblivious that Duke still had his hand wrapped between both his own, to ask Audrey as she climbed in, "What's happening, Parker?"

She craned around in the driver's seat. "Mr Garbutt took sick suddenly yesterday. If this had been a long-term condition I'd be less worried. As it is..." A scraping noise made them all turn to eye a crow on the car's hood. "I think we need to look into this pretty urgently."

"No shit," said Duke.

"How are we going to do that?" Nathan asked. "Chief's going to send me home the second he sees me in the station."

Audrey's expression set in determination. "You're involved now. The birds are attracted to you guys, too. _I'd_ rather have you both where I can keep an eye on you. You might as well be helping at the same time."

"You did hear that she said 'helping'," Nathan qualified pointedly to Duke, frowning down at the seat between them but not commenting upon his captured hand.

"I help," Duke asserted. "You guys aren't even asking the question: where'd they all _go_?"

"Yeah." Audrey rolled her head on her neck with a sigh as she turned around to start the car. "Now that your natural pessimism brought that up, I have to worry about it, too."

"APB?" Duke suggested. Both cops dutifully ignored him. Audrey picked up her radio.

"Laverne?" she said, that sigh still infusing her voice. "I need to know if there are any more weird animal behaviour reports. Specifically birds. Oh, and there's a local GP, Dr Peters, who'll be arranging morgue transport for a body that I need Julia to take a look at ASAP... Yeah, another one. This one takes priority. It's something new." She set the radio down, shaking her head, and started the car.

Nathan wrested back his hand. Duke mouthed "why?" and "come on!" and made several other charades-style entreaties. Nathan sat and glowered, telling him with a twitch of his eyebrows to _be patient_.

* * *

Back at the station, Audrey had a serious dig into how many people had died of accidental or natural causes in the last few days, the deaths that _wouldn't_ usually reach their desks, and no-one liked what she found.

"Five is way too many for a town this size." Audrey left the paperwork in Nathan's hands and sped out to corner the Chief.

Nathan poked at the reports, shuffled four of them out of his hands and into Duke's (what was _he_ supposed to do? Make paper airplanes?) and got his cellphone out. "Sorry to disturb you, Miss Maitland, this is Detective Wuornos, Haven PD... Just one follow-up question. You see any birds around, when Mr Lears fell off his ladder...?" A pause. "Big, black birds. Right. No, that's all. Thank you." He cut the call and bowed his head, tapping the phone against it in a slow rhythm. "...Shit."

"Two of these people lived on the same street." Heroically resisting the urge toward origami, Duke had all four of the files across his lap, letting his eyes roam over them. "You know what? It's the same damn street Mortimer Kale lived on." He slapped his hand down hard on the files, making two of them jump clear and hit the floor. Fucking _enough_.

Nathan stared at him. "Garbutt didn't live there."

"No, but I bet we can verify where the _window cleaner_ was on Thursday," Duke said, hearing his words come out biting, jerking his head at the file Nathan held. "Maybe the old codger was in the area, too."

"You think this is still...?"

"Wouldn't it be a _huge fucking coincidence_ to have two mass-death Troubles in less than a week?"

"Jerry Coggins is dead." Nathan dropped the file and swung around to pace. "Audrey shot him."

"She _says_ she shot him. Audrey... has not been the most forthcoming girl where the truth is concerned, this week."

Nathan predictably closed up and growled, "_Damn it_, Duke...!"

"No, listen." He raised his hands, not that such gestures usually worked to soothe the savage Wuornos. "Something's weird about Audrey. You know it. Look, I'm not saying..." He sighed, because there was no way he was getting anywhere with Nathan while Nathan was wearing a face like that. "Okay, what if Audrey just thinks she killed him? Or what if his Trouble was passed on to someone else? Or, hell, something's happening here that we don't even begin to understand. But one thing that's got to be true is that _this_." He wielded the death reports. "_This_ is too much coincidence."

Nathan nodded tightly, giving him that much. "Agreed."

It seemed weird even for Haven that people were continuing to die in different ways after the source of the original Trouble was supposed to be dead, but who the hell knew how the rules worked with this shit? Fucking taxidermy! Who was to say a Trouble couldn't mutate? Or a death-Trouble couldn't continue to kill after the death of the person afflicted with it?

Garland Wuornos slammed in right then, cutting short any other conversation. "Nathan," he stopped at the sight of Nathan leaning against his police desk. His shirt sleeve had strayed up over the 'x' of tape.

"Dad." Duke watched Nathan's every trace of emotion crawl back inside and hole up at the sight of the Chief. Nathan straightened, brandished the 'x' on his arm, and demanded, "You knew about this?"

Garland's face twisted, and something snapped in him. Duke fell back as he lunged, but he wasn't the target, and it turned out that any instincts he might have to protect Nathan as a result of the recent change in their relationship knew their limits.

He'd never seen Nathan more astonished than when the Chief engulfed him in a bear-hug. It only lasted for an instant before Garland pulled brusquely away and delivered a few tremendous blows to Nathan's back that rocked him on his feet. Garland rounded off the punishment by shaking Nathan by the shoulders. "God damn it, son."

The expression on Nathan's face mostly said, _Help_, but no way in hell was Duke interrupting. Apparently neither was Audrey, who'd re-entered the office on the Chief's heels.

"What the hell?" Nathan demanded.

"When you've seen your kid dead, it puts a few things in perspective." The Chief's voice was gruff. He took an awkward, distancing step back and drew a cigarette out between shaking fingers.

...Oh. _Oh_, thought Duke. Garland had seen that? Was this the first time they'd been face-to-face since? How the hell had the Chief stood for that? Unless he'd intended things that way... passing messages using Audrey and keeping Nathan home to recover... Duke suddenly imagined all the questions and fears that had been going through his own mind, viewed from the other side. He thought about someone he cared for being resurrected from the dead by freakish means. How might they react? Would they be the same? Could he face it if they _weren't_?

Garland's admission seemed to have left Nathan unable to find words.

Audrey put in a few, soberly. "I told you, Chief. Nathan's fine." _Fine_ was a word that could carry a whole lot of subtle charge. "They found out, but he's tough, like you raised him to be."

True to form, the words that burst out of Nate's mouth, stubbornly and fiercely, were, "I want to _work_. Whatever else I am, I'm not _sick_."

"Goddamnit, Nathan," Garland growled, "I thought you were dead and gone and this harebrained scheme of hers was bound to bring nothing but heartache, but it ain't some ghoul with my son's face standing there, with that all he can say in the face of all this." Garland patted Nathan's chest fondly, his mouth twisted and eyes teary. So... Garland knew Nathan was real for the same reasons Duke did: because only the real thing could be such an emotionally constipated jerk.

Nate grabbed his dad's wrist, forestalling the next contact. He opened his mouth and for a moment it seemed he'd say something, but the Chief was drawing back now, and wasn't that the way it always went with these two? Nathan went defensive again. "...So now you know I'm still me. Am I still a cop? Or is that something you intend to keep withholding?" He read Garland's failure to come up with an immediate response badly. "What is it that you're looking for? What proof of trust?"

"That's not - goddamn it." Garland delved in his pocket aggressively and hurled something black and silver that smacked against Nathan's chest before falling to the floor through his grasping hands. "Knock yourself out. 'Course, no-one knows what damage that fool body of yours can take now or can't. You want to tempt fate?"

Nathan dropped to retrieve his badge, keeping his eyes on the Chief with all the caution due an armed felon. But Garland didn't wait, turning on his heel as soon as he'd delivered the badge and marching out of the room. Audrey barely avoided getting slammed by his shoulder.

Nathan cursed, straightening, and lunged after him. That part was unexpected, and through the internal windows, Duke watched Nathan catch the closing door into Garland's office and follow him inside.

Duke and Audrey exchanged blank glances. "He saw Nathan," Duke said flatly, after a beat. "Dead Nathan." That would be enough to screw up any parent. _Anyone_.

Audrey had had her hands full with both of their corpses.

"It was a weird twenty-four hours," Audrey said. "It was a weird seventy-two hours, but the part right after... Landon wanted to try, but there was Garland, and there was me, and there were... words. A few of those."

"Garland didn't want to bring him back." Duke read between the lines.

"Garland said Nathan was dead, and no good would come of using any Trouble to fix that: something would go wrong, it always did, and it was a fool's game trying to use any curse for good... trying to bring back anyone who should be gone." She blinked hard and turned away.

So Nathan's dad was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Well, Duke could sympathise, because he was still waiting, too. In the meantime... "Look." He laid the files they'd been studying out on Audrey's desk.

She picked them up, staring at the addresses. "This makes no sense..."

"Now, why would you expect anything in this town to do that?" Duke mocked wryly.

"How could it be the same Trouble? Everyone affected last week just dropped dead. These all look natural or accidental."

"I don't know how," Duke said. "I only know it is. One more thing: Nathan managed to link at least one of them to crows." He explained the rest of their ideas.

"We really need to know where those birds went to. It's not necessarily the kind of thing that generates a police report, but maybe there's a... a Haven bird-watchers club?" She circled her hand in the air, testing, waiting for input.

Duke shrugged. "Birds. Who even knows? Ask Nathan, _he_ likes the sorts of dull things people get intricate and obsessive about."

"I should check Mr Lears' personal effects. He must have had some sort of schedule. Maybe in his phone. If we can establish he was there that morning, that's a solid connection..." Her investigative patter ran down and she paused with her eyes on Duke. "Duke," she said, softly hoarse with emotion. "If you didn't want to live like this... I know I made the choice for you, and it wasn't as though I could ask... But I'm sorry."

_Shit_, thought Duke, who wasn't ready. "You are gonna have to give me a day or two to get used to this, Audrey. Assuming we have a day or two." Grudgingly, he added, "I guess even if all this ends today, at least I got one last dance with Nathan for old times' sake."

Audrey's expression perked up a little, though she instantly countered, "It's _not_ going to end today. If this Trouble is still a threat to the two of you, we'll deal with that." The force in her voice startled him. She managed to calm herself and offered a sly grin. "Nathan's a... good dancer, is he?"

Duke blinked. "Does all right for a guy who can't feel what he's doing. Yeah."

"I'm really glad you guys sorted things out." She touched his hand tentatively. "Maybe it'll give you both a reason to tough through this once we've dealt with the... immediate problem."

_And wouldn't you just love that?_ Duke thought. _A handy free pass absolving all guilt._ Aloud he said, "It's Nathan. He'll probably take offence at me breathing the wrong way and we'll be back to fists and name-calling tomorrow. Speaking of which, you think Wuornos and Wuornos need any intervention?"

"I'm sure they're fine." She didn't sound sure.

But while they were tapping their feet and not-so-surreptitiously watching the corridor a few minutes later, Nathan emerged from the Chief's office looking dazed. Audrey poked Duke's arm and they hurried to jump on him and demand details.

Nathan couldn't be pressed to say anything about how the conversation with Garland had gone, but it couldn't have been too badly, because when Audrey said they were after information about bird-watchers, Nathan ducked back into the office to get contact details for the rest of the Haven Twitchers from his dad. Who knew, huh?


	3. Chapter 3

There were no reports of crows amassing again, though the head of the ornithology group seemed keen to tell Audrey everything about every kind of bird that frequented Haven's skies, and by the time she put down her cellphone she looked set to murder the next feathered friend that ventured near.

Ted Lears' personal effects were over at the morgue in a plastic evidence baggie. They had to wait an uncomfortable half hour to get his phone charged up enough to access the information they wanted.

While Audrey fiddled around looking for a charger that fit, Julia eyed both Nathan and Duke with what Duke was growing to recognise as the knowing look. There was a sort of soft, wry sadness on her pretty features. Nathan rolled his sleeve up again to show her the 'x' of tape, neatly avoiding actually having to vocalise anything on the subject. "Can we... see?"

"Morbid curiosity got the better of you, huh?" she responded, tipping her head. "Come along, then."

Duke _did not want_ to see. He did not want to see dead bodies generally, but particularly not the poor suckers whose fate he had shared. Let Nathan be morbid and curious.

...So Duke didn't quite know why he was hanging a few steps behind Nathan while Julia opened drawers to reveal cold-faced corpses, unmarked and frozen in the moment of unexpected demise. The expressions of the dead people had no pain or fear imprinted upon them, no awareness they'd been about to die. The fact they looked so... so _casual_ about it was itself freaky. Eventually, Duke just obscured his line of sight by standing behind Nathan, who seemed set on being thorough in each and every examination.

"Can I see Jerry Coggins?" Nathan asked finally.

"He's a bit messier than these," Julia said, for Duke's benefit, poking her head around Nathan's shoulder.

"Sure." Duke gave a thumbs-up and looked steadfastly away. "Don't mind me."

Coggins had been shot in the head from point-blank range. It wasn't _that_ messy, all things Haven considered, but he was definitely dead. "Yeah, as corpses go, that's a dead one," Duke agreed, and dropped his hand back down over his eyes while Nathan and Julia indulged in another really good, close look.

"Audrey shot him," Nathan said, and even though it wasn't really a question, Julia nodded. "All right... Thanks, Julia."

The body of Mr Garbutt arrived just after that on the van, and they left Julia to her investigation and sat on the steps outside the front of the building, waiting for Audrey.

"She killed him," Nathan said, "Just like she told us. Are you ready to give up this craziness and start trusting Audrey again yet?"

"It's not that." Duke stopped, because it _had_ been that, for a little while. He changed tack. "She wasn't killed, Nathan. We died. Thirteen other people died. People could still be dying. She was in the middle of it and she's fine." He thought about it and amended, "Well, for a not-dead value of 'fine', considering all the people dropping like flies around her, which probably isn't, you know, psychologically great." He frowned. "The chameleon couldn't kill her, either. He said she was 'different'. And you know it, too." He wondered if Nathan would volunteer the information. How much was it going to take to get him to spit it out?

Nathan played his numb fingers over his cheek and then each other, reflectively, his face sombre.

Duke prompted, "I see you flinch when she touches you. _You_. Flinch." He jabbed a finger into Nathan's shoulder, hard, and Nathan backed him up with no reaction whatsoever.

"It's not like that," Nathan said sullenly, hunching. "I haven't told her, so I sure as hell shouldn't tell you." But he rocked in position for a few moments with arms locked over his knees and his face rigid, then blurted out, "I can feel Audrey. I don't know what it means."

"You can _feel_-?" Duke didn't know what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. The instinctive protest, the urge to _deny_ that roiled up inside him was hard to quantify. "You can _feel_ her?"

"Yes!" Nathan snapped, misunderstanding. "When I touch her... skin, it has to be skin, it doesn't work through clothes... I _feel_ it. I hadn't felt my own face in years, and then suddenly one little peck on the cheek she gave me when Jess left, and I had _skin_ again! It was overwhelming. You have no _idea_."

Duke thought he had some idea. Shit. Nathan could feel Audrey, and how the hell was he supposed to compete with that? He rolled his eyes and sighed; hunched his knees in a copy of Nathan and dropped his forehead onto them. "Okay, Nate, I get the picture."

"You say that like you think I _want_ to be reminded of everything I've lost with any casual touch," Nathan growled. "Well, I don't, but I want to touch her all the same, _all the time_, and it's messing me up." He groaned and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "She's my partner. She said she was my friend. And all I keep thinking about is... is _using_ her. How much skin contact would it take to make me feel properly alive? Would any amount ever be enough, if all I feel the rest of the time is _nothing_?"

Duke tentatively wrapped his fingers around Nathan's wrist. He might not feel it, but his skin was warm. Duke's fingers brushed tape, reminding him it was still only the illusion of life, now. Damn it.

"Feeling her doesn't help," Nathan said, oblivious to the touch. "It just makes things worse."

"But what does it mean about Audrey?" They had to get this back on track before she came out of the morgue, but Duke felt like the wind had been taken out of his sails. "That would mean your Trouble doesn't work on her. The chameleon thought she should've died, and she didn't. She didn't die from Coggins' Trouble, either. Is this a Trouble that's immune to other Troubles? We have to tell her."

Nathan un-hunched slightly to look at him, face flickering in the moment he noticed the light grasp Duke still maintained on his wrist.

"She's been keeping things from us, but if we know about this and don't tell her, that's no better," Duke added. "If you don't want her to know you can feel her after trying to get a grope in every opportunity, I get that, but we still need to tell her. She's only going to be more pissed the longer we leave it."

Nathan made an annoyed noise and changed the subject. "Julia knows about us. About the, uh, taxidermy," he specified.

"Yeah, I caught _that_."

"I should go ask her some questions while I have the chance. We need to know how to manage this." He jerked his stiff face into a challenge at Duke's lack of jumping for that idea, and rolled to his feet. "Look, she was there, and she's a doctor. She knows things."

Duke waved a hand go-to fashion and smiled a tight smile that wasn't all that amused. "If you want to treat this as a medical problem, go ahead."

"This is our lives now." Nathan leaned back down to hiss the words close to Duke's ear. "If we have to be full of sand and scraps instead of blood and bone, it wouldn't hurt to have a doctor's best guess what that means for us. Can we still get sick? Would the same things kill us? Piper died, but she was ripped apart. If the magic's in the stuffing, hers was strewn all over the room."

"Sounds more like it's Landon we should be talking to." Duke stiffly levered himself to his feet. The pain had improved from the day before, but he'd also forced his body to be a lot more energetic than it wanted to be. Now it was protesting.

"I suppose he has months of experience on us." Nathan screwed up his face

"Awkward?" Duke prodded.

"Yeah, a bit." Nathan stared into space.

"He was there, too," Duke said. "He can corroborate what Audrey said. Maybe give us some other answers. We should totally go talk to him." He watched Nathan's brows draw together sharply, and because he was expecting another rebuke, it took a moment to realise what he'd just said. "...Oh. Oh, _shit_."

"You wait here." Nathan was loping back up to the front door of the building as he rapped out the order, but he ran into Audrey coming out before Duke had chance to protest. "Parker!" It was almost a yelp as Nate barely stopped in time. "We need to get to Landon!"

Duke saw understanding cross Audrey's face in an instant. She grabbed Nathan, steadying his wavering balance. Duke could see her hand brushing skin at Nate's wrist as she hustled him toward the car and how he averted his face from her: how his flesh yearned somehow both away from and into her touch. Audrey reached for Duke as she passed him, but he avoided her and made his own way down the steps after them.

After they'd all climbed into the car, Nathan leaned gazing sightlessly out of the window, fingers reflexively stroking over the wrist Audrey had touched.

...Ow. That wasn't complicated at all.

"Nate," Duke hissed. "Focus. Okay?"

He didn't get a reply but Audrey got: "What's the verdict on Lears?"

"Cleaning the windows at number 25 last Thursday. If Landon dies..." She craned over her shoulder, eyes moving between them both. Duke made an incoherent noise and pointed at the upcoming junction, and she took a moment to ensure she didn't kill them all right now. "There's no reason to believe you guys have to die if Landon does. After all, Piper's dead and Landon kept going."

Duke's reassurance lasted until he registered that meant he was starting to cling to this state like it _was_ living. "Probably be useful to keep him around, though," he said bitterly. "Patch and repair. Nathan needs a little already. Honestly, the amount of scrapes he gets I'd say Nathan was stuffed if he wasn't already stuffed."

"Shut up," growled Nathan.

Audrey slewed them to a halt outside the Taylor dry-cleaners. The door of the shop front was open and she was out of the car marching in without a glance back at either of them. Nathan sighed. They exchanged looks and moved to follow. Nathan paused to take Duke's arm when he faltered, but broke away too readily when he was steady again. Frustration rose in Duke and he felt the places where Nathan's hands had touched more intensely than any other part of him. He wondered how long the thought of sex with Nathan at the end of this damn awful mess could continue to power him. He involuntarily growled a little at the possibility there might _not_ be sex with Nathan at the end of it. Nathan could come to his senses. They might not 'survive'. But they were a matched pair now, chained together by their macabre status. Who else was Nathan going to turn to?

Jealousy burned in him at the thought of the bright blonde who had just disappeared in front of them, whose touch Nathan could _feel_. He had to coax down his inner caveman before he could enter the dry-cleaners.

Landon Taylor had emerged from the back room of his shop to greet Audrey. His expression froze as Duke and Nathan entered, too, though his eyes paused only momentarily on Duke. "Nathan..." he began anxiously, hands moving out in some aborted gesture toward the other man and then sagging like an abandoned marionette.

"We know what happened," Nathan said, waving it off.

Audrey grabbed Landon's shoulder. "You were there last Thursday, and other people who were have died since. Have you noticed anything unusual? Crows hanging around? Are you feeling okay?"

"Noticed...? No, and I haven't had so much as a common cold since... since the fire." His eyes darted warily to Duke, who shrugged. "Why _crows_? What's happened?"

Duke was deeply unsettled by Landon Taylor. It was there in all his movements - the stiffness of his limbs, the jerky way he carried himself. There was an unreality about him that, knowing the truth, made it wholly unsurprising. Anyone not already knowing the guy was as much dead skin and random filler as his hobby creations would hardly have guessed it, but only because who the hell _would_?

Watching Taylor, Duke hoped like hell he wasn't moving like that. He'd always been proud of his body's athleticism, his discipline and ability to take care of it. He'd not been making a lot of effort to see the bright side of his situation, but he'd at least been assuming things were going to get better. The aches would go, his movement would improve when he got used to it, and this was just a recovery period. He hadn't noticed Nathan moving any differently, but that was _Nathan_, who couldn't feel anyway, who was almost as wooden as Taylor to start with.

Audrey explained to Landon, "When Jimmy Coggins' Trouble activated on Thursday, people started dying as though the effect rolled outwards from him. The people closer... died... first." She visibly had to force herself to relate the story again, eyes hollowing in the recollection. "You were close enough to help. But the people who were next in line then are dying now, as though Jimmy's Trouble didn't stop, just... slowed down."

"There were big, black birds at the other deaths," Nathan said impatiently. "Have you seen any?"

"We can't be sure if you're in danger or not," Audrey said. "Or if Duke and Nathan are. Since this Trouble already killed them, you might say it's done its worst. It's a slightly different question whether you'd be vulnerable to it, but if you can't catch a cold..."

"Thanks for that one," Duke volunteered.

"Some of the new victims died in accidents," Nathan said, drawing Landon's gaze back to him.

Audrey nodded. "It's like they were already supposed to be dead and fate was redressing the balance."

"Oh, like _we're_ supposed to be dead?" Duke started, belligerently. His voice dried up... In taking that last step, he could now see into the back room of the shop. Half the room was set out like a kind of hobbyist workshop, and unable to help himself, Duke was drawn toward it. "_Shit_. Is this where you... did it?"

"I..." Landon held out a hand as though he'd stop him, but recoiled at the prospect of actual touch, which was ironic, considering all the parts and places Landon _must_ have touched. Duke felt his face go rigid, and fixed it with a teeth-bared expression that wholly lacked any qualities of a smile as Landon confirmed, "I hadn't done this... for some time, you understand, after what happened before. But I still had the equipment, even if I hadn't used it for months. Something wouldn't let me throw it away. I knew I should be able to make it work by myself. Part of me _wanted_ to find out." He paused and swallowed. "Are you both... all right?"

"Does the pain go away?" Nathan asked roughly. It was an incongruous choice of question, but he steadfastly ignored everyone's reactions, holding his chin level and keeping his face an immovable mask.

"Uh, it did fade. I didn't know about this at the time. My wife was dead. I had to be there for my son... I kind of remember hurting." Landon gestured down at himself with both hands. "Look, Nathan, you were absolutely right. Once I got past the shock, there _was_ no reason not to keep going. I can barely tell the difference. I definitely don't want to _die_." He turned to Audrey, distracted. "What did you say happened to those people?"

Duke returned to eying the back room as Landon focused on Audrey's full explanation of their new victims. Unwittingly, he found himself edging past Landon, venturing inside. Nathan echoed his steps, and they stared at each other, then around the room.

There were no visible bloodstains or buckets of discarded pieces, though there was a funky smell, and if Duke was smelling it, Nathan would be getting it worse. A big chest freezer in one corner drew Duke's attention. He wondered if some part of him remembered being in here, because he had the strangest feeling. They would have spent time here. Putting them back together must have taken Landon the best part of two or three days...

Landon gave a soft curse and broke away from Audrey to head them off. "You can't be in here." His hands were twitchy and his forehead was sweating.

Duke got it like a punch in the gut. "There's still something here, isn't there? What? The discards? I mean, shit, I'm basically stuffing in a skin-suit now, aren't I-?" That fucking freezer... He took another step toward it, horrified but pulled strongly nonetheless. Maybe it wasn't _memory_ causing the feeling of familiarity here.

Landon nervously blocked off the freezer, hands extended warningly, placing himself like a sentry. An arm curled around Duke from behind, halting his steps and yanking him backward.

"_Nathan_, damn it...!"

"Not now, Duke."

When Duke broke the grasp and rounded on him, even Nathan was too pale. "I don't believe it," Duke said to Landon. "They're actually still in there?" He was half laughing, and he didn't know why, because this was so un-funny it didn't bear dwelling on.

"We didn't have chance yet to..." Landon trailed off. He was looking at Audrey.

"Cop should know the best place to dispose of two bodies," Nathan said. "Or... _most of_ two bodies, I suppose." His face screwed up, and that really wasn't a smile on his lips, however hard it was trying.

"This is so fucking sick." Duke cast a glare at Landon, still between him and the freezer, but it struck Duke finally that he very much Did Not Want To See... and as far as he was concerned, the guy could relax.

A small noise made him turn to look behind them. Nathan was quicker, but he still wasn't quite quick enough to catch Audrey before she hit the floor.

* * *

Nathan's dismay filled the car. Duke could feel it rolling around the small space, trying to exacerbate his guilt even more. All right, so he could concede that maybe Audrey, too, was having a hard time with this. With the decision she'd made to save them, as well as the nasty practicalities involved. He hadn't seen Officer Parker faint before and hadn't imagined she _could_. Never mind that he'd felt like doing it, quite a few times throughout this business.

She hadn't been out very long - had already been coming around by the time Nathan got his hand to her cheek and started speaking her name in panic, a few seconds after she'd hit the floor. Duke had joined Nathan on her other side, swearing and apologising and grabbing at her hand like a dick. But maybe the reminder of their presence didn't help very much because it was Landon she was sitting with in the back of the car now.

She had been back to business soon as she'd gotten hold of herself. A few sips of water and some squashed candies from Nathan's jacket pocket was all it took. Her first words had been, "Vince and Dave. Maybe Jimmy Coggins' Trouble was hereditary, like Beattie's, or Landon's. Maybe they've seen something like this happen before."

Vince and Dave knew all about this shit, too, so that encounter was going to be another delight.

"Tell me, Nate," Duke said, in an attempt to distract himself from Audrey's chalk-white face in the rear view mirror, "Why are you always the designated driver?"

"Because I'm neither hysterical or recovering from loss of consciousness," came the stiff response.

"No, because those would involve having an emotion. I see where the root of this mystery lies."

Nathan rolled his eyes, demonstrating the emotion of pissed-off. He turned his head slightly and demonstrated the emotion of concern: "You gonna be all right now, Parker?"

"I'm fine." Audrey sounded fairly pissed off, too - Duke figured she was mostly annoyed with herself for being human. "Just the thought of what was in there and everything Landon had to do, all over again..."

"_Shh_," Duke broke in quickly, then backtracked. "Jesus, you were _there_?"

"For some of it. He needed help to work quickly." Her voice was raspy and her skin had gone translucent again.

"You don't have to tell us," Nathan said, talking hastily over what was, actually, the approximate same reassurance Duke was mustering - the line of conversation was obviously not productive.

"When I went home, after... I have never thrown up so hard in all my life," she said, with a sideways look at Landon, then shook her head and seemed to steel herself to move her thoughts away from it. Landon didn't look very happy, either, and Duke supposed it was one thing to have the practice on animals but entirely something else to work on the long, exhausting and involved task of stuffing another human being, let alone one you knew... Shit, and he _definitely_ needed to stop thinking about this.

"You did that for us," Nathan said, face forward and set like stone. "I'm certainly glad I'm... still around. Thanks." Which was thanks that had to be dragged out past a whole lot of baggage, but doubtless Nathan was trying his best.

"Working on it," Duke muttered, then feeling judged, cried in addition, "What? I'm working on it! I can't be any fairer than that." A different thought suddenly occurred to him. "So now you've seen both of us naked..."

Audrey kicked the back of his chair hard. "If you even _dare_ ask for a comparison..."

Duke ducked as she went for the top of his head with her palm.

Things got a bit better, after that.

Nathan pulled up the car outside the _Haven Herald_ offices. As they were getting out, Duke paused to offer Audrey his arm if she needed it. She looked as though her first impulse was to refuse assistance, but then she took it anyway, accepting the peace offering.

Vince and Dave were already looking up from their desks as the four of them filed in, so much have followed their approach through the big storefront windows. Both newspapermen's brows were up and their eyes large. Vince kind of managed not to drop the ball. "So... what's going on here? Audrey? _Nathan_."

"You look pale," Dave fussed, standing up and hurrying around to present a visitor chair to Audrey.

Vince leaned forward to peer at her in concern. "Do you need some sweet tea?"

She just sighed and said, "Thanks, Dave. Vince," and sat down. She leaned forward in the chair, hands rested on her knees, a posture of challenge despite her lingering weakness.

"We know, you guys," Duke said, waggling his hands at the two brothers. Nathan nodded and frowned, and Landon looked as if he'd like to hide behind someone, but folded his arms and hung back instead. "We're all right, by the way," Duke continued. "Thanks for asking. Oh, except for the dead part. And the fact you didn't ask."

"My God," Dave stuttered, adjusting his glasses, peering in a fascination that seriously annoyed Duke. "I couldn't really believe it would work."

Vince ventured around from behind his desk. Eyes narrowed in intrigue, he cautiously gripped the arm of Nathan, who was nearest, and caught up his fingers in a broad, age-spotted hand. Nathan made an uncomfortable noise and jerked back from both touches. "Astounding," Vince agreed. "Even feels warm to the touch. Nathan." He gave a wary, mollifying nod.

"_Guys_," Audrey snapped, while Nathan was still spluttering and searching for some comeback. "They're alive. Landon's... magic... fixed them. Can we get past that, because we have other work still to do here?"

"What would that be, Officer Parker?" Vince still seemed just short of assaulting Nathan again in some way, and Nathan's face spoke of reprisal imminent if he did, but fortunately Vince turned instead to pay attention to Audrey.

"Jimmy Coggins. He might be dead, but I'm not so sure his Trouble is. We know that some Troubles have been passed down generations. I'm wondering if there's anything in your archives that could help us."

"People are still dying?" Dave asked.

"The same people who'd have been next in line before," Nathan filled in. "Landon was near ground zero, so for the time being we're keeping him with us. But we don't know how far this could spread. We need to shut this down fast, Dave. Vince."

"Well, then I certainly hope the _Herald_ can tell you something." Dave looked at his computer and wiped at the sudden sheen of sweat on his bald head. His fingers picked nervously at the keys. "Coggins... let me see. I remember his father, Stuart. There was Mary Jenners before that. Now, _she_... She died in a fire. I remember that." Landon winced, unacknowledged.

"Ooh!" Vince's eyes bulged as he practically jumped up and down with excitement. "Mary, I remember. And poor old Stu. Then his brother, what was his name...?"

"Andy, you sieve-brained old oaf. Andy Coggins. He only ran the Haven Post Office for twenty years. I don't suppose you'll remember Mary's mother's name?" Dave didn't wait for Vince's bumbling brain-racking. "Here we go... births, 1937. Born to Enid and Barry Jenners. Let's take a look here now..."

The Teagues found, looking back, a relative who'd been a victim of a rash of food poisonings at a fete, another who'd been caught up in a mystery epidemic, and 'poor' Stu had been killed in a bus crash, where some sort of toxin had been presumed to be involved because some of the victims had no marks of injury. A string of mass 'mystery' deaths... Duke found himself shuddering, and all of them were temporarily silenced by the thought.

"One thing for certain," Dave said finally. "When this family go out, they take a lot of folks along on the ride with them."

"Funerals," Vince said, punching his brother in the arm. "You remember. Stu and Andy. After what had happened to Mary, we all found it strange how they'd write that into their wills."

Dave's eyes narrowed, clearly none the wiser. "Write what?"

"Cremation, damn it!" Vince jabbed his finger at the screen. "You go through those obituaries again. I'm thinking each of those people got burned up or got cremated. And Stu, he died at what, twenty-nine? Andy not much more than a year or two later. Little Jimmy got taken into foster care... Seems to me they never had chance to pass on the need to..." His voice descended into a hiss, "..._Salt and burn the bones_."

Duke stared at them as the two old men snickered and nudged one another. "What the hell?"

"Oh, nothing," Dave chuckled. "Just this TV show Vince is hooked on about two brothers, much like yours truly," he gave an expansive gesture over himself and Vince, and then air-quoted, "'_hunting down the supernatural_'."

"This is exciting," Vince said keenly. "You still got that nasty whisky you were moaning about Friday? Might come in handy!"

Duke rolled his eyes. Audrey pulled a very sour face and said flatly, "You guys are _so_ not Sam and Dean."

Nathan looked blank. With a desperate bid to inject sense, he said, "You're saying the bodies need to be burned. If so, Jimmy Coggins is still in the morgue. We need to get back to him and finish this."

"Before anyone else dies," Audrey agreed, getting up. Her phone rang before she'd taken more than a step toward the door and she plucked it from her pocket and held it to her ear. "Yep? _Chief_?"

She listened a moment while Nathan's hands clenched and his frame leaned toward her, giving the odd aborted twitch like he wanted to grab the phone. Considering he was _right there_, Garland's own son, and the Chief had called his partner instead, Duke couldn't blame him for feeling conflicted.

Audrey had been sporting the pasty-white look ever since her faint, but Duke discovered it was still possible for her to turn paler. "Okay, Chief. Look-" Her eyes darted at Nathan. "We know _why_ people are still dying. Jimmy Coggins' family were always cremated within forty-eight hours of death. We'll head over to the situation, but _you_ need to go to the morgue and burn Jimmy's body."

Duke heard the sharp exclamation which met that suggestion from where he stood. Nathan snatched the phone from Audrey's hand and growled into it. "Dad, just do this one thing, damn it. Forget secrets and conspiracies and the damn cover-ups, or at least think about them _later_. You're the one with the authority to walk in and do this _now_. No-one knows how much of Haven's population this Trouble eats up if we don't stop it."

Nathan swore explosively and Duke realised he was holding a dead phone, on the verge of hurling it at something. Audrey quickly grabbed it back.

"Shit..." Nathan's burst of frustration ran down and he clutched his head, teeth bared in a fixed fury. "What did he even say?"

Audrey supplied, "He said, 'Those birds you fool kids are so interested in are flocking like it's the end of the goddamn world down on Auson Street.' We need to get back to Kale's neighbourhood. Fast."

* * *

Vince and Dave headed off in their ancient van to help Garland. All reasonable estimates indicated they would arrive long after everything was over, but they seemed sincere and convinced of their ability to help. Meanwhile, Nathan put his foot down and wrung record speeds out of Audrey's little rental car, taking them to Auson Street.

Where the sky was almost black.

"Don't suppose anyone has an umbrella?" Duke asked, as they sat in the car, staring at the bizarre tableau. The occasional _splat_ on the pavement or the car's paintwork proved those were all real crows. "I'm just saying... _I_ don't fancy getting out without one."

"I thought the local spin on _that_ was that it was lucky," Audrey said.

"That's sea birds," Duke told her. "This is just birdshit."

"This a lot more birds than at Mr Garbutt's place," Nathan said, kicking his door open and climbing out. Ducking his head back down, he asked, "How many deaths does _this_ herald?"

Duke thought he heard the softer sound of a _splat_ landing on fabric before Nathan slammed the driver's door shut, but sighed and followed him out of the car anyway, holding one arm above his head as a shield. He kicked away a few interested crows that ventured too close. On the plus side, the birds didn't seem to have any more interest in Landon than their casually confused interest in Nathan and himself.

Auson Street was on the intersection at the end of the short road where Mortimer Kale had lived. Duke could see Kale's house if he looked that way, with its big gates and lengthy, grassy drive. "So here we are again." He shot a furtive glance at Nathan. "Place where we died, and everything."

"We were here yesterday morning," Nathan pointed out.

Yeah, but they hadn't _known_ then. But Duke bit his lip and considered that it might be a lot healthier, in such circumstances as these, to have Nate's comparative lack of imagination. He didn't say that aloud because with a bit of luck he was still going to be able to command all of Nathan's attention later without having to jibe and pick at him to do it. His smart mouth was all well and good, but he still wanted to get _laid_.

People were out on their doorsteps, or the more sane or fastidious ones in their windows. Not a full complement for the neighbourhood, since there'd be people at work and school, and probably, _hopefully_, that meant they'd been at work and school when Jimmy's Trouble kicked in last Thursday. It _could_ be worse. This much was bad enough.

"I sure as hell hope Julia and Garland are getting that body to an incinerator right now," Audrey said under her breath.

"Would it do any good to evacuate the area?" Nathan asked, blank tone indicating even he didn't believe it.

"It's not going to make a difference," Duke said, pointing at a guy who'd ventured out of his door and been mobbed by the crows. "You can already tell who's the next lucky number up just by the freakin' Hitchcock extras."

Nathan and Audrey charged in to help the guy and escort him back to the cover of his home. Audrey batted at the crows with her gun, and even loosed a shot, which startled the birds and set up a noise of raucous complaint and ripple of unease among the black clouds above and the crows lining the roofs and windows of the houses. Nathan didn't have his gun restored to him yet, but he took the opportunity of the brief clear patch around them to hustle crow-bait guy inside, shutting him in. Both cops then had to waft a few more birds away from Nathan. Duke hoped that Nathan couldn't draw the attention of the damn death Trouble _back_ to himself.

"Over there," Landon said, grabbing Duke's shoulder. His face and voice were strained as he pointed to the corner across the road. "That's where I was when I saw the lady collapse up the street."

Nearer than this. Nearer than the houses the crows weren't interested in because everyone who'd been in them on Thursday was already dead. "Then I don't think you - or we - are in the line of fire for this," Duke said. It was a shock to him how small a comfort that actually was. "Just everyone else here."

"I was trying... trying to save her. Normally." He pulled a face. "Then I heard Audrey. She took me into the Kale place. There were so many _bodies_. You and Detective Wuornos, the family, the people out here... I thought, what if I could _help_?"

"I know, buddy." Duke squeezed Landon's shoulder back, understanding, now, the need to do something, _anything_, to lessen the horror. He thought of generations of Jimmy Coggins' family at the centre of mass killings, history repeating disaster again and again, and wondered how any of them could do anything other than just _end_ it, living under that threat. Of course, Dave had suggested Jimmy hadn't even known.

Landon was giving him a startled stare, but Duke settled his eyes on Nathan again, feeling the relief and infinite possibilities of _not being about to die_. He might have indulged more time and thought to that, but... Yeah. They still didn't know how many corpses the end of this day would be strewn with, and that put a damper on even his and Nathan's version of romance.

A charged ripple went through the crows around them. Nathan was a way down the street, escorting some other curious cat back to safety, but turned and looked to the sky. Audrey was walking her way back to Duke and Landon by the car. She froze in her tracks in the middle of the street. "_No!_" she shouted, and her gun lowered in her hand as she started to shake. "No! It can't happen again..."

Duke could _see it_. Everything laid out. Every painful, bloody aspect of the decision she'd made in the face of horror, writ clear in her chalk-white face. Helplessness, and futile fury, in the face of a situation so shitty that none of her clever solutions would work. She could only patch up and salvage what she could. When Landon made his offer, she must have been desperate to claw back _anything_ from that awful event.

Nathan was too far away. Duke ran to Audrey and folded her in his arms. The gun was somewhere down by his hip, but he counted on her cop instincts to be pointing it away from him and tried to ignore it as he crushed her to him, pushing her head into his shoulder. "Don't look." His voice broke. All these people... The bird-lined houses with no-one visible at door or windows, was that because the occupants were dead already? Or like Mr Garbutt, sick and dying? "It's not your fault. You couldn't do a damn thing more than you already did."

He tried his best to make himself a barrier against the world, to protect her from what was to follow.

But the ripple that passed through the clouds of crows transformed, mutating even as it spun out. Duke _felt_ it, the force so sinister and malevolent it surely couldn't carry anything but doom within it... suddenly relax. In the space of a few seconds, the sky cleared, the darkness of a thousand black wings lifting to allow the sun to glimmer again through the patchy clouds.

"Oh, thank God," Duke mumbled into Audrey's hair, feeling his knees sag. She made a little noise of protest at abruptly finding herself holding most of his weight, and he quickly braced his legs again. "Julia and the Chief must have done it."

Audrey nodded and sniffed, still slightly squashed, but not complaining. Duke consciously relaxed his grip. Nathan, coming toward them at a run, skidded to a halt.

"You feel warm..." Audrey said, slowly, muffled. "I really can't tell."

"Well, you know what Nathan and I were up to earlier," Duke conceded, "and we couldn't tell. Although that's maybe not so surprising, with..." He caught a glimpse of Nathan's face and shut up.

A few more people were venturing out of their houses now the clouds of birds had gone, reassuringly curious and alive. Audrey pulled clear of Duke and heaved a shuddering breath, rubbing her arm over her face, holstering her gun. "We should... go knocking on doors," she said. "Make sure everyone's all right."

Nathan's phone rang. He plucked it out of his pocket and stared at the caller ID, his face twisting in puzzlement, before he slowly lifted it to his ear and hazarded, "Dad?"

Even Duke heard the expulsion of relief from the other end. Audrey, nearer, sniffed again and scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, and mustered a dented smile.

"No, we don't think we lost anyone else," Nathan said. "Duke and I are fine... Yeah. We'll come back to the station as soon as we've mopped up here." He listened and said, "All right," a bit numbly, before he lowered the phone. "Chief's sending some officers," he said to Audrey.

None of them needed to point out that in the heat of the moment, when Garland Wuornos didn't know if his son was dead or... well, slightly-not-alive-but-at-least-still-_around_... he hadn't contemplated the delay, even of seconds, that he'd have had by continuing his policy of awkward avoidance. He'd gone straight to the source and called Nathan.

* * *

Minor chaos reigned for a while. Other officers arrived and Nathan, who was beginning to show some wear, dropped out of the action, though Audrey wouldn't contemplate leaving yet, and she had their wheels. Garland was presumably still busy with Julia, covering up a covert incineration and the fact the morgue was one body short.

Nathan wasn't Super-man; he collected the same damage as everyone else, even if he didn't feel it. Because he mostly didn't react to it, it was hard to remember that. Duke needed to remember that.

He caught up to where Nathan was standing - leaning - and took up his hand, because nobody was looking at them and no-one was dying, and he could. Nathan looked bewildered, but moved his feet compliantly as Duke led him through the big gates and into the grounds of the large house that had been Mortimer Kale's. Duke walked them out of sight of the street, pulled Nathan close and kissed him.

Nathan was startled and less reactive than usual, so it wasn't the most successful kiss ever. Duke pulled back from scraping their teeth together and held Nathan's face instead, rubbing his thumbs over sharp cheekbones... or the illusion of cheekbones (how did that even _work_?), but Nathan's face still felt real.

"So... this is the place where we died," Duke said slowly.

"That's romantic now?" Nathan asked, indistinctly, jaw moving as though he were still rolling the kiss around his tongue. Duke's belly fluttered weirdly as he realised Nathan didn't know how lousy a kiss that had been.

"It brought you back to me. That's if... you _are_ back now, aren't you?"

Nathan's tongue licked his bottom lip, leaving a faint sheen of moisture that fixed Duke's gaze. "I'm back." So they would have time to practice the kissing. Nathan cleared his throat and shook himself. "Kinda wish now that I didn't have the rest of this... _situation_... to deal with, and we could just go home." Being Nathan he said 'situation' and not 'clusterfuck', while managing to make it sound like he was saying 'clusterfuck' anyway.

Duke buried his frustration beneath a laugh. "I don't think you were ever technically back on duty. You could say 'fuck it'. Or more to the point... 'fuck _me_'. Because I want you." He curled his hands around Nathan, let them slide down to his hips, and then grabbed his ass with enough gusto that even Nathan should know exactly what his hands were doing. "I want this. As soon as humanly possible. Please?" he tagged on as Nate's eyebrows rose.

Nate didn't shove him off, so he let his hands wander, concentrating on the front of Nathan's body, because maybe the guy couldn't feel, but his eyes sunk down and hyperactively took in every touch, until a spacey expression overtook his face. Maybe it was just as simple as making him feel wanted, and desirable, instead of broken. Duke's approach of the last few years, then, had definitely _sucked_.

"If we screw here-" Nathan jerked his head up, suddenly. "Is that romantic, too?"

"Uhm." Duke took a conscious step back, assessed the territory and its gloomy baggage, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. The thought of what had happened here sent a shudder through him. "Okay, maybe we're better off waiting until we get back to the _Rouge_."

* * *

At the station, Landon sewed up Nathan's arm, making exclamations of dismay about the cause of the damage, and Duke assiduously avoided watching him do it.

Instead, he poked with great focus at his own flesh; at the skin of his arm, or at least his skin covering an arm that looked real, _felt_ real, but he knew wasn't real. He watched the skin distort with the pressure he applied, rippling out from his fingertip.

Looking up, he found Garland standing silent and closed-off in the doorway, watching him and watching Nathan. The grey eyes set in his wrinkled, grizzled face seemed to plead for Duke's silence, so he did nothing to acknowledge Garland's presence. Nathan was watching the repair job with his own morbid interest, detached but still fascinated. Landon pulled the needle through and... Duke turned away again.

By the time they'd finished, a row of neat stitches wound around Nathan's arm instead of an 'x' of tape, and Garland's face was set and gruff but not the lost, destroyed, helpless look it had worn to greater or lesser degree ever since they'd woken up dead. "You gonna start taking more care of that body, now you collect those marks like Frankenstein every time you take a knock?" he barked, startling Nathan and Landon.

"Frankenstein's _monster_," Duke corrected. "Jeeze, it's like no-one's ever actually read, or _seen_-" Maybe it wasn't the time for literary nitpicking. He shut up.

Nathan held up his arm and stared as though waiting for the stitches to fade away into flesh. They didn't. He sighed. "Yes, dad. I'm going to be careful."

"Well, just you see that you do. I'm damned if I'll have a patchwork police officer that can't pass for human. Even in this town."

Duke suspected that was meant to be Garland expressing affection.

"I'll _be careful_," Nathan said, irritated.

"It's the skin," Landon said, apologetically. "Once you damage the skin, it seems like it's damaged for good."

"I'll be careful," Nathan said again.

"You gonna be reporting in for duty tomorrow?" Garland asked it abruptly, after a bit of distracted looking this way and that and tapping the door jamb, trying to pretend the question was casual.

It really was no wonder Nathan was so emotionally unavailable.

But Nathan's face softened, understanding. They shared the same language, after all. "I'll be in."

"Good." Garland slapped his blunt hand a few more times on the door jamb, then took himself off in a hurry. Duke could hear the frantic _click-click_ of his lighter and smell the first tang of a lit cigarette even as he walked away.

"It's going to take him... time, to come to terms with this, I imagine," Landon offered, trying to be supportive.

Nathan gave a noncommittal grunt. "Wait until I tell him I've started sleeping with Duke again."

* * *

"I can't believe it's taken us this long to get back to this," Duke groaned, practically hauling Nathan into the bedroom while his hands worked at his clothes. Why did Nathan have to be so buttoned-down?

Nathan, for all his observational and detecting skills, had seemed surprised to be grabbed the instant the doors of the _Cape Rouge_ were closed on the outside world. He really ought to know better. After all, Duke wasn't made of stone, and after hours of having to behave around Nathan for the public audience, how was he expected to exercise restraint now?

Nathan wrested free from his attacking lips to ask, "What? Six hours? Or eighteen years?"

"Don't ask me to pick which was harder," Duke grunted. Nathan gave a bark of rare laughter and finally got his act together, reciprocating by dragging open Duke's pants. They got jeans and underwear down to knee-level before practicality forced them both to divert to take off shoes. Duke caught Nathan straightening up and unfastened his cuffs and a few buttons, then with a brusque order of "Hup!" pulled the whole shirt off over Nathan's head. Duke plunged them both onto the bed, pushing Nathan down into the soft give of the mattress with his arms still above his head.

Straddling Nathan, looking down, Duke experienced another of those glad-to-be-aliveish moments that had been landing on him with increasing regularity. _Looking_ at Nathan, it crossed his mind that he didn't _get_ this lucky, and that meant it was all by definition going to go horribly wrong - until he remembered all the death and fucking taxidermy that had gone into making this moment possible, and his cynical psyche figured... _yeah, okay_, and was reassured. Everything was par-for-the-course and he was still in Haven.

The extended study caused Nate to draw in a long, shuddering breath beneath him. It was erotic as hell. But then Duke felt tension increase again in the body he was straddling. Since the events at the police station, Nathan had been quiet and compliant. It should have been obvious that wasn't going to last. Nathan squirmed and sat up between his legs.

Duke caught his shoulders before he got pushed off. "What is it?" For good measure, he leaned in, sliding one hand down to Nate's groin while he kept the other more or less where it was but stretched his thumb so the edge of the nail could scratch Nathan's nipple.

Nathan shut his eyes and turned his head aside, effectively excusing himself from proceedings. "We never told her."

"Told who what?" Duke asked with frustration.

"Audrey, damn it!" Nathan snapped. Duke's head jerked guiltily upwards... He maintained that he couldn't be blamed for a bout of Stupid, given the circumstances. "No, she's not _there_... But... She still thinks she's normal. She's Troubled, and we need to tell her."

"Is this _really_ the time?" Duke cried out, exasperated, fighting Nathan again - though all the leverage was already his and they shouldn't be having to fight anymore. So he'd _thought_. He closed his eyes and sighed. "Nathan. _Sex. Now_. We can deal with Audrey's issues another day. Which, if you ask me - being immune to the fucking Troubles is a _great_ Trouble. Probably the least lousy Trouble in existence. So stop sweating about her and worry about us."

Somewhat to his relief, Nate sagged back co-operatively again, looking between their bodies and swallowing hard at the sight of Duke's hand around his cock. But apparently he couldn't resist asking, mutinously, "You think she'll be okay?"

"Well, _she's_ not a walking wall hanging, so she'll be fine." Duke wondered if Audrey Parker was thinking about them both together right now. Maybe the idea gave her some kind of comfort. If his charms had started to work on her, maybe it gave her a hint of jealousy.

..._Enough_ thinking about Audrey Parker. He felt Nathan's surrender beneath him, and that wasn't something to let go to waste. After all, he had waited one hell of a long time for it.

"Where were we...?" He set fingers against the ridges of ribs that were only illusion, trying not to think about the illusion, and this time Nathan bucked underneath him and ground up into his hips. Nathan's hands rose to catch Duke's face, giving up his leverage to bring him into a kiss, eyes-open and fixed to Duke's. Nathan must have caught from his expression how close he was to losing it. The leap of near-telepathic intuition between them in the absence of half their collective nerve-endings caused enhanced arousal to shiver through both of them in response.

This was going to be a little bit odd.

Duke supposed he should accept _odd_ as inevitable where Nathan Wuornos was involved. He framed Nathan's face with his hands in return and asked the question bluntly: "Are you going to let me fuck you?"

Earlier had been desperation and heat of the moment, and Nathan had taken the lead. This... Nathan had never liked surrendering control even back when they were kids, and here, now, they were approaching something that would require him to put on display all the places where he was broken, the compensations he had to make to live in a body that couldn't feel. That was a... sensitive issue between them.

When they were teenagers, Nathan's weird affliction had been in the past and they were _so over that_. It was a Thing They Did Not Speak Of. Different altogether to tackle it head-on as grown men.

Duke waited tensely through the seconds his question went unanswered. Until Nathan said, "It's what I've been waiting for all damn day. When are you going to get on with it?" Laughter bubbled up, shaking his long, slim body.

"_You_..." There wasn't a good enough insult in Duke's vocabulary for that moment Nathan lay back silent and let him hang.

But as though the particular note of frustration and anger he'd injected made the word 'you' an endearment, glazed-eyed and blissed-out, Nathan replied, "_Duke_."

"Hah." Duke groped for their improvised lube of earlier and scraped out a dollop. He kept his eyes locked to Nathan's as he climbed over him and pushed his fingers down to navigate unseen until they found their goal. The key had to be in not losing eye contact... not leaving Nathan floating without a clue in his unfeeling skin while Duke took his own pleasure.

...Of course, there were other things that Nate probably wanted to see. Duke watched his eyes slide slowly to Duke's erection, so very ready for this. The hunger that sparked in Nathan's blue irises left it impossible to form any other conclusion but _hell yeah_ he wanted this.

Nathan was a man of few words but his face said, _now_.

Duke worked his fingers quicker, hurrying to finish preparation that he was definitely not scrimping on. He had unlikely but horrible visions of them fucking the stuffing out of each other, and... "Oh my God."

"Don't _stop_," Nathan growled, kicking him.

Duke groaned, and scissored his fingers one last time before withdrawing his hand. "Just a... a _bad_ overabundance of imagination." They rearranged limbs until he had a whole lot of frustrated cop pressed beneath him and sinewy legs curled up past his shoulders. "You are so, _so_ lucky you don't have that problem."

Nathan tipped his head up and _wow_, that glare was a doozy. "I can still decide to go home."

The idle threat sent an uneasy shiver through Duke all the same, but Nathan was curling hands around his neck and arm, clearly not going anywhere. After eighteen years and a lifetime... Duke swore as he lowered himself down and pressed slowly into Nathan. He watched the small movements and changes flicker in Nathan's face, and thought that he didn't look so much like a mannequin after all.

On the contrary, he looked like everything Duke needed to convince himself they could still be _real_.

It was a little awkward. Face to face, for the benefit of Nathan's eyes, out of practice, a fraction clumsy. Duke was too ready and Nathan wasn't ready enough, or at least lagged behind, sensation-impervious. Duke was forced to buy restitution with his head buried between Nathan's thighs, bobbing his mouth high to the tip of Nathan's cock and licking long and hard back down the length to make a visual show, until Nathan shuddered and curled his hands in Duke's hair as he came, making sounds he'd thought never to hear Nathan Wuornos make again.

He tasted as warm and real as he felt.

"That was... God..." Nathan lay back, his shudders slow to subside, numb body overwhelmed.

"I still prefer 'Duke'," Duke grinned, dopily, rolling and sprawling, stretching his languid, singing limbs atop the rumpled covers and staring at Nathan like he was a shiny present, and if he'd been in an anime he'd probably have big hearts in his eyes. It was sad. Really.

He couldn't help it.

He would have liked to imagine the anime hearts in Nathan's stare back, but was by no means that confident. Still, Nathan looked satisfied, and Duke thought proudly that _he'd done that_, made the unfeeling ass feel - and this one was way, way better an achievement than all those years of affront and hurt and anger.

Nathan's toes played with his, lazily, and his eyelids drifted down, then jerked back up. "Are we really doing this? I mean-" Nate's face dipped shyly. It was almost cute, and Duke thought, _holy shit_, and he wasn't sure he could take any more moments like that in one evening. "We've been freaking out all day. Could be argued we're not in our right minds."

Duke appreciated that use of 'we'. Then again, Nathan freaking out was either Godzilla levels of destruction or completely impossible to tell apart from his normal demeanour, so who knew?

"Point: we don't, technically, even have minds." Freezer, Landon's workshop... _not thinking about it_... "Point two: _I'm_ still freaking out. I'm just making the most of the compensation. _Because we really, really have got to_." He reached out and closed his fingers over the illusion of muscle in Nathan's thigh, the part of Nathan closest to his line of sight. Maybe that gesture came off needier than he'd intended. If he could just hold Nathan _now_, and somehow transfer that hold metaphysically, make it become a force to ensure Nathan would stay with him. In his bed, as often as possible. Duke tried, "Just because it's never worked before doesn't mean it can't work now."

Nathan's eyes laughed at him, though his voice carried dismissal in its rasp. "We were kids. Idiots."

"Oh, we're still idiots," Duke said, laying it on with a condescending level of reassurance.

A soft snort. "So this is how we manage our untimely demise."

"Together?" Duke picked up, raising his eyebrows in challenge because, well, it had been Nathan who'd said it, when he himself had no hope left to expect anything of the kind, after the hostility that had marked things between them for years. "There are worse things to be. Do not even get into the worse things," he added quickly. "Or what we _are_."

"It doesn't have to matter," Nathan said.

So Nate was still playing the denial game. Duke was going to have to try very, _very_ hard to emulate him and not _let_ it matter, lest he be stuck freaking out about his own body, trapped in the prison of his very fear. There was no escape from that except death or madness.

Judging from Landon and Piper Taylor, they could be around like this for a long time yet. This was far from over, and Duke was still very far from coming to terms with it.

But maybe, just maybe, with a Nathan to cling to he could find his way through.

A stuffed-comfort-toy joke coiled and readied and then died on his lips. Duke bit the end of his tongue hard and glared past Nathan to the wall with annoyance for his wayward brain.

...Too soon, damn it.

_Way_ too soon.

END


End file.
